(AP) -- 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."
During Columbia's fateful mission, the drive had been used to
store data from a scientific experiment on the properties of
liquid xenon.
Most of the information was radioed to Earth during Columbia's
voyage. Edwards was able to recover the remainder, allowing
researchers to publish the experiment in the April issue of a
science journal, Physical Review E.
That led Kroll Ontrack to share details of its salvage effort.
Columbia broke apart during re-entry into the atmosphere on Feb.
1, 2003, killing its seven astronauts. The shuttle had been
damaged at launch by foam insulation that fell off an external
fuel tank.
Like other Columbia debris, the mangled disk drive turned up in
Texas. It was six months after the disaster when a NASA
contractor sent the drive to Kroll Ontrack, which specializes in
data recovery.
Edwards had reason for pessimism. Not only were the drive's
metal and plastic elements scorched, but the seal on the side
that keeps out dirt and dust also had melted. That made the
drive vulnerable to particles that can scratch the tiny
materials embedded inside, destroying their ability to retain
data in endless 0s or 1s, depending on their magnetic charge.
However, at the core of the drive, the spinning
metal platters that actually store data were not
warped. They had been gouged and pitted, but 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.
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.
Edwards was gratified.
And to drive home just what a long shot his
recovery had been, he later had no success with
two other drives found in Columbia's wreckage.
Blasted by the unfathomable furnace of entry
into the atmosphere, their metals had lost the
ability to hold a magnetic charge.(AP NEWS)
