Dead iPad? $1,000 can bring your data back
Found on Ars Technica on Saturday, 29 January 2011
For instance, Bross told Ars that "the flash chips used in the iPad have several layers of NAND flash stacked on top of each other." Each of those layers has to be analyzed separately, and data from each layer has to be mixed together just the right way to re-create the logical format of the volume stored in the flash chip.
Sometimes the chips can be easily desoldered, while in other cases the chips are covered in epoxy resins that have to be carefully removed to prevent damage to the NAND flash inside.
Gone are the days of the simple harddrives which you could simply stick into another computer to get the data off of it. Oh wait, that's still possible with any normal PC.