Extreme Data Recovery: Salvaging Data from the Space Shuttle Columbia

Thursday May 8, 2008 

I clearly remember the morning of February 1st, 2003 when I heard that the Space Shuttle Columbia had been destroyed over the central United States. It was a vivid reminder of the dangers of space exploration. In addition to the loss of life, all of the data from the on-board experiments was also presumed lost. Now, five years later, one of the experiments has been completed thanks to a remarkable piece of data recovery.

The CVX-2 experiment stored its data on a 400MB Seagate hard drive. The drive was recovered from the debris, and although badly damaged by re-entry and impact, engineers at Kroll Ontrack were able to recover 90% of the data on the drive. This allowed the CVX-2 researchers to complete their experiment and bring a 20-year research effort to conclusion.

Hat’s off to the engineers at Kroll Ontrack. This is a feat on par with IBM’s recovery of the Space Shuttle Challenger’s flight data recorder tapes.

Source: Blocks and Files (includes a photo of the hard drive)

Filed Under Storage

Comments

3 Responses to “Extreme Data Recovery: Salvaging Data from the Space Shuttle Columbia”

  1. Clay Collins | The Growing Life on May 8th, 2008 4:06 pm

    I LOVE the subtitle for this article.

  2. Clay Collins | The Growing Life on May 8th, 2008 4:06 pm

    Um… I mean that I love the subtitle for this blog.

  3. K. T. Stevenson on May 8th, 2008 4:12 pm

    @Clay: Thanks! I found your blog just the other day and have been enjoying it.

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