That platter was remarkably intact. You can send broken drives like this to a company. They can recover most of the data. NSA could do it too. If you don't over

That platter was remarkably intact. You can send broken drives like this to a company. They can recover most of the data. NSA could do it too. If you don't overwrite several times with a random pattern it is recoverable. Also that drive is old and I am suspicious that is the only copy, or that the novels we're there anyway. Seems likely Pratchett destroyed them already and this was symbolic.