[rlapuma]

I know a great deal about hard drive infrastructure. There is no way to scratch one without not only removing it from the chassis but you must then cotort around the protective casing.

[defconw]

Years ago, when people still used tapes. I worked at a data center. We had back ups of back ups. We had some federal contracts that we ran on big wheels and sent them a the tape. We kept a copy of the tape. Some time later we went to platters. Platters were easily broken. So we went to virtual drives. Now I was on the human end of things. So of course that job is no more.

We were required by law to keep things depending on what they were any where from 1 week to perpetuity. Most of the Gov't stuff was a minimum of 7 years. My point is, I am not sure what sort of tech they are using. But I can virtually(pardon the pun), guarantee, there are backups, somewhere.