Data from Columbia disk drives survived the shuttle accident

<http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SHUTTLE_RECOVERED_DATA?refresh=1>
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.
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