STAR TREK Creator Gene Roddenberry’s Long Lost Data Re-materializes with the Help of DriveSavers

LAS VEGAS—January 4, 2016—DriveSavers, the worldwide leader in data recovery, eDiscovery and digital forensic services, formally announced today that the company has recovered nearly 200 floppy disks belonging to Star Trek creator—the late Gene Roddenberry.

The original Star Trek television program ran from 1966 to 1969. Roddenberry created scripts for the futuristic show on a typewriter. And later, he used a pair of custom-built computers to capture story ideas, write scripts and notes. Over time, the author moved on to work with more mainstream computers, but kept the custom-built pair in his possession.

Although Roddenberry died in 1991, it wasn’t until much later that his estate discovered nearly 200 5.25-inch floppy disks on which the Star Trek creator stored his work. One of the custom-built computers had long since been auctioned and the remaining device was no longer functional.

LunaTech, the IT company retained by Roddenberry Entertainment, suggested sending the disks to DriveSavers. “We’ve been working with DriveSavers for over 5 years,” said Bobby Pappas, president and founder of LunaTech, “we knew if anyone could get this unique data back, they could.”

But these were no ordinary floppies. The custom-built computers had also used custom-built operating systems and special word processing software that prevented any modern method of reading what was on the disks.

After receiving the computer and the specially formatted floppies, DriveSavers engineers worked to develop a method of extracting the data. There was no user manual for the computer, nor was there any technical documentation to help guide them.

It took over three months for the DriveSavers engineering team to develop software that could read the disks. Even though the engineers were able to crack the unusual formatting, reading the nearly 200 disks was tedious work that took the better part of a year to finish.

After months of painstaking work to recover files that hadn’t been seen in over 30 years, the question remained, what kind of data did DriveSavers unearth? The answer? “Documents,” says Mike Cobb, DriveSavers director of engineering. “Lots of documents.” As to the contents of the documents, Mike says, “2016 just happens to be the 50th anniversary of the original Star Trek, anything could happen, the world will have to wait and see.”

About DriveSavers Data Recovery

DriveSavers Data Recovery, the worldwide leader in data recovery, provides the fastest, most reliable and only certified secure data recovery and eDiscovery service in the industry. All of the company’s services meet security protocols for financial, legal, corporate and healthcare industries, and it is the only company that posts proof of its annual SOC 2 Type II Audit and HIPAA data security and privacy compliance. DriveSavers adheres to U.S. government security protocols, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) Data Security Rule, the Data-At-Rest mandate (DAR) and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). DriveSavers engineers are trained and certified in all leading encryption and forensic technologies and operate a Certified ISO Class 5 Cleanroom. Customers include: Bank of America, Google, Lucasfilm, NASA, Harvard University, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, U.S. Army and Sandia National Laboratories.

Contacts

DriveSavers Data Recovery
Alex Hagan — 415-382-8000 x163
[email protected]