Courtesy of ComputerWorld, FierceCIO, and the NY Times, it turns out that Kroll Ontrack has managed to recover 99% of the data from a Space Shuttle Columbia hard drive.

Think about it: the shuttle disintegrated, traveling mach 19 at 200,000 feet, killing all seven onboard and leaving a debris field some 1000 miles long across Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas.

The drive was found charred, cracked, and melted in a dried riverbed six full months after the accident.

Time to polish up those data destruction policies...