Researcher saves data from melted Space Shuttle hard drive

An employee of data recovery company Kroll Ontrack has managed to recover research data from a melted hard drive that belonged to the Space Shuttle Columbia that crashed in 2003.

The hard disk was removed during the Columbia Mission used to store data from an investigation into the properties of xenon gas in space. Although much of the findings had already been sent to Earth during the mission, data recovery expert Jon Edward was able to salvage the missing data from a badly damaged hard drive. This allowed the scientific research yet to be published.

The disk, like other debris from the Shuttle, was found shortly after the accident in the US state of Texas and was sent by NASA to Kroll Ontrack after six months. According to Edwards, the hard drive, barely recognizable as such, at first glance consisted of no more than two pieces of metal stuck together. The hard drive was clearly badly burned and partially melted during the explosion of the Columbia shuttle in the atmosphere. Edwards also found that not only had the plastic and metal parts melted, but the protective layer, which was supposed to protect the platters against dust and dirt, had also been damaged.

Still, upon closer inspection, the platters of the 340 Megabyte drive were not damaged beyond repair; the hard disk was only half filled with research data and it was precisely this part that turned out to be relatively intact, so that a rescue attempt could be made. It also turned out that the file system used came from an old DOS variant, so that the data was written unfragmented. By cleaning the platters with a chemical substance and placing them in a new running gear, Edward was able to recover 99 percent of the data that had been lost. The entire recovery process took two days message AP. Unfortunately, two other disks recovered after the ill-fated Shuttle mission were found to be so damaged that repair operations proved impossible.