A data recovery company has retrieved 99% of the data from a hard drive recovered from the space shuttle Columbia crash in 2003, reports Computerworld.

"The heads were bent and they were touching where they shouldn't have, so we had to carefully cut and bend metal away from the platters to get them out without causing more damage," said [John] Edwards.

Once cleaned, the platters were placed into a spare drive and carefully aligned with a new motor. Because the original circuit board was destroyed, Kroll had to use trial and error to determine which firmware was needed for the device.

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