May 16
French investigators reported Monday that crucial data had been recovered and downloaded off airplane black boxes from an Air France jet that went down in the Atlantic two years ago. The lingering mystery of why Flight 447 crashed en route from Paris to Rio de Janeiro in 2009 hinged on retrieving the black box data after a painstaking search for the wreckage buried at sea. In the initial months after the crash, the race to find the black boxes before their location tracking ‘pings’ stopped transmitting proved unsuccessful. The data in the black boxes now in investigators’ possession will yield a treasure trove of data that is recorded during a plane’s flight – speed, direction, position, as well as all radio conversations of the pilots on board. This breakthrough of new information may prove to be the critical turning point in the longstanding and mysterious case.
How the data was retrieved out of the black boxes is not only interesting but a great example of how data is resilient, something that CBL Data Recovery sees first-hand in recovery and forensics projects. The French Bureau of Investigations were dealing with a water-logged electronic device. Drying out the components would have been a major part to starting the recovery process. With a bit of luck no doubt, the components on circuit boards and memory chips were still functioning and data could be accessed and pieced together into understandable formats and audible conversations for the voice recordings. CBL has seen projects arrive from flood zones, earthquakes, and other natural disasters where the damaged media has been under similar conditions. Water-damaged hard drives, usb media and even a company’s backups that have been in our labs have us reminding customers and the public that data is resilient all the time. Getting the word out to victims of disasters that their data is still recoverable and not lost forever is often part of the challenge our business development and lab managers face. With careful tactics and professional attention, data can frequently be restored from water damaged hard drives and digital storage media as CBL and Air France investigators have worked to find out.
We love a good mystery at CBL Data Recovery, and will be continuing the watch this one unfold with Air France Flight 447. Remember, data is resilient and you can turn to CBL Data Recovery for expert data recovery services and forensics projects.
Category: data recovery, data loss prevention
Tags: data recovery specialist, flood damage, flood waters, natural disasters, restoring, water-damaged, water-damaged hard drives
May 16, 11:38 AM
Flight was from Rio TO Paris!!!
Jun 24, 12:16 PM
Gosh, I wish I would have had that ionrfmtaion earlier!