It's actually very difficult to truly destroy data, especially remotely. There is actually a reason the DoD spec. requires physical destruction of the media.
Unless you have overwritten the area on the physical disk that contained the data, multiple times, the data can still be recovered.
The article doesn't lead me to believe that he's tried very hard to get this data back.. Maybe somebody (not me) who cares about this resource, should offer an attempt at data recovery.. Just be sure to hurry, before they do something that will ensure you cannot recover the data.
I've recovered data off of formatted HDD's, off of corrupted file systems, off of compact flash cards and other media (Really useful if you want to keep those photo's that someone thought was deleted, be aware of this people).
It's amazing how most people seem to think deleted means gone.