ke=mv^2

Someone chucked a Compaq Presario off the 10th Street Bridge onto the Eliza Furnace Trail. The memory I pulled from the wreckage probably survived but odds are that the 8 Gig drive did not. Terminal ballistics can be an odd thing, though. The case folded up and exploded. It's possible that most of the kinetic energy of impact went into destroying the case and thus protected the drive, much like modern cars fold up to protect to occupants. On the other hand, hard drives are fairly delicate so I may just have an 8 Gig paperweight.