At CES 2013, we talked to Ontrack Data Recovery who told us they were able to recover data from a customers iPad that
was heavily damaged in a plane crash. What Ontrack Data Recovery do is
take apart the device, in this case an iPad, and take the physical
memory chips off. After this step, they image the chip raw, and then
piece the data back together in the same pattern that is normally done
by the controller chip.