Data from Columbia disk drives survived the shuttle accident

Yahoo! via AP ^ | 5/9/2008 | BRIAN BERGSTEIN

[shove_it]

Jon Edwards often manages what appears impossible. He has recovered precious data from computers wrecked in floods and fires and dumped in lakes. Now Edwards may have set a new standard: He found information on a melted disk drive that fell from the sky when space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in 2003.

"When we got it, it was two hunks of metal stuck together. We couldn't even tell it was a hard drive. It was burned and the edges were melted," said Edwards, an engineer at Kroll Ontrack Inc., outside Minneapolis. "It looked pretty bad at first glance, but we always give it a shot."[...]

[shove_it]

Now that's a disk crash!! Go to the source url for full story & photo.

[Izzy Dunne]

[Mr. K]

The computer was running DOS????????????

What year is this?

[shove_it]

Even though the crew neglected to “park the disk” ~ amazing.

[jimfree]

Ontrack has recovered data from a crashed drive of mine. I knew they were good but this is very impressive. I would guess NASA paid a bit more than the $1300 I coughed up.

[rawhide]

the 340-megabyte drive was only half full, and the damage happened where data had not yet been written. Edwards attributes that to a lucky twist: The computer was running an ancient operating system, DOS, which does not scatter data all over drives as other approaches do.

Good old DOS.

[rawhide]

After cleaning the platters with a chemical solution, Edwards used them in a newly built drive. The process — two days from start to finish — captured 99 percent of the drive's information

[Popman]

The computer was running DOS????????????

I don't know, I would hate to wake up in space one fine morning and see the "blue screen of death" looking at me

[Reaganesque]

Even the latest Windows version, I believe, runs on top of DOS. So, all PCs have DOS on them. Another reason to buy a Mac.

[Reaganesque]

Also, let that be a lesson to all of you who try to hide porn on your hard drives! You know who you are!

[Mr. K]

Windows has not run on top of DOS since WinNT i believe (maybe even windows 95, but certainly 98)

[tickmeister]

At first glance I thought this was a joke about John Edwards recovering data to sue doctors.

[Leisler]

The Shuttle still or until recently ran off floppy disks. A tool is a tool. If it does it's assigned task, move your attention, time and money to other things.

Mac's run over DOS too. Apple was just first with the easy user interface applied over DOS. All pc’s run off UNIX. 99% percent of Apple physical parts are common with Windows/Linux machines, and can be used by either/or.

[shove_it]

HAHA! Me too.

[babygene]

More credit goes to the drive manufacturer in my opinion than to DOS. On this generation of disk drive, the servo code is embedded in the data allowing the heads to properly track the center of the data track and also identify the beginning and end of the error correction code for each sector. Older drives used a servo surface on one plater which was used as a reference for all the other platters. That would gave been tougher.

[happinesswithoutpeace]

Agreed! Think of all those pedoapologists out there!

[ASA Vet]

try to hide porn on your hard drives!

Isn't that what floppy disks are for?

[nobdysfool]

Win 98 was the last to run on DOS. WinNT, 2000, and XP are a different system. Win Millenium was an attempt to marry DOS with NT, and failed miserably.

Don't confuse command lines, and their commands. Even though NT has many similarities in commands with DOS, they are NOT the same.

WinXP is NT 5.1

[Anti-Bubba182]

"..After cleaning the platters with a chemical solution, Edwards used them in a newly built drive. The process — two days from start to finish — captured 99 percent of the drive's information..."

So, apparently, the platters were not bent in the crash.

[KoRn]

May be of interest.