Data Recovered From Space Shuttle Columbia HDD 274
WmHBlair writes "Data recovered from a 400MB Seagate hard drive carried on the Space Shuttle Columbia has been used to complete a physics experiment performed on the mission in space. The Johnson Space Center sent the recovered drive to Kroll Ontrack in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Considering the shape the drive was in (see picture in the linked article), it could indeed qualify for the 'most amazing disk data recovery ever.'" Update: 05/08 12:51 GMT by T : Reader lucas123 points out a piece at Computerworld with a series of photos of the recovered drive.
Yup... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fastest /. effect ever ! (Score:3, Insightful)
At least the pic of the server [blocksandfiles.co.uk] is still intermittently retrievable!
Re:Mounting Brackets (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the condition of the drive, it's hard to say. The exterior was obviously fried, but it was still basically drive-shaped, and from the picture it's impossible to say how damaged the platters were. If the outside was messed up but the platters were still intact, I would think recovery would be fairly simple. Would have been nice to include a picture of the interior of the drive, or maybe even multiple pictures as they took it apart.
Re:I've had some drives crash on me, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
only 400mb? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I've had some drives crash on me, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't count on it. First off, they probably didn't even know if they could recover the data. Second, they would have no way of knowing for sure that NASA would release the information about them providing the data recovery services. Third, they very likely wouldn't have known whether or not the data (if recovered) would be used for anything in the future. Fourth, there are very strict rules about government agencies doing business where they don't pay for services, especially with potentially classified data on the drives.
I would bet very strongly that they got well paid for this recovery.
Re:only 400mb? (Score:3, Insightful)
I would say it was likely the experiments exact hardware requirements were set in stone a year or two before launch. Flash drives are plentiful and reliable now, but may not have been deemed reliable enough at the time.
When it comes to space, tried and tested older equipment is better. Just ask the Russians.
Re:Yup... (Score:4, Insightful)
What about the temperature of re-entry? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say that's the part that makes this impressive. Re-entry is known to be pretty darn warm. And heat will scatter magnetic domains. Heat up a magnet - it's not a magnet anymore.
Either this HD was in the center of a ball of stuff and didn't get very hot, or Seagate has some seriously awesome engineering going on.
Data Replication (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:only 400mb? (Score:3, Insightful)
And the scientific article on CXV... (Score:3, Insightful)
Robert F. Berg, Michael R. Moldover, Minwu Yao, Gregory A. Zimmerli Shear thinning near the critical point of xenon [aps.org], Phys. Rev. E 77, 041116 (2008) doi 10.1103/PhysRevE.77.041116 [doi.org].
In the article, they mention a bit about the data recovery:
The data-recovery aspect is quite interesting. So is the fundamental science. They had to run the experiment in micro-gravity to eliminate the density stratification that occurs for any liquid or gas subject to gravity. Shear thinning [wikipedia.org] is a well-established and fairly well-understood phenomena in "complex fluids" (e.g. mixtures of solvents and polymers, like paints, lubricants, etc.); but it is quite interesting to have measured the effect in a pure one-component atomic gas. It's hard to imagine a simpler fluid, and yet it exhibits this interesting viscosity effect!
I'm glad that this scientific experiment was salvaged from the otherwise tragic final mission of Challenger.
Re:First post (Score:2, Insightful)
And is it just me, or is that a SELECT statement without a WHERE clause?
Re:Yup... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yup... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:only 400mb? (Score:2, Insightful)
Experiments must fit within the constraints of the rack (power, size, cooling requirements). If you participated in any university based science programs you understand the limitations of funding. Creating a whiz-bang, cutting edge data storage technology is usually low on the list.
The Xeon gas experiment probably had most of the work done on measurement instrumentation and software. IT hardware is off the shelf as much as possible.
No one plans on the shuttle turning into a meteorite. I bet that the principal researcher was not going "gosh, I hope they can save my data" when they saw the pictures over central Texas.