"Obviously, they have a lot of resources to do it. And, if the drive's platters aren't smashed they can put them into another drive and read them," Michael Kessler said. "But if he broke the platters, the likelihood of data recovery is slim to none."
The head of the cyber-forensics programs at Purdue University, Marcus Rogers, disagreed that data would be irretrievable if the drive's magnetic platters were broken, punctured or scratched.
He told Computerworld that if some areas are intact, certain devices can read the digital ones and zeroes and transfer the information to a new hard drive.
On the other hand, Brian Cane, a consultant with ECO Data Recovery, said if Lanza overwrote the drive, the data would be lost.

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