The Slanted: Over 200 Floppy Disks Owned by Star Trek Creator Gene Roddenberry Recovered

Publié à l'origine par The Slanted.

If you remember floppy disks, then you are showing your age, but we won’t hold it against you. The oversized and flimsy disks were once the staple of data-saving back in the 1980s and 1990s and they marked a pivotal moment in personal storage for both PC computers and early Apple computers. The disks eventually gave way to thumb-drives and cloud-storage, but before they did, they were once used by the dozen to save the work of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.

DriveSavers, one of the worldwide leaders 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, la société informatique engagée par Roddenberry Entertainment, a suggéré d'envoyer les disques à DriveSavers. "Nous travaillons avec DriveSavers depuis plus de 5 ans", a déclaré Bobby Pappas, président et fondateur de LunaTech, "nous savions que si quelqu'un pouvait récupérer ces données uniques, c'était bien eux".

Mais il ne s'agissait pas de disquettes ordinaires. Les ordinateurs fabriqués sur mesure avaient également utilisé des systèmes d'exploitation personnalisés et des logiciels de traitement de texte spéciaux qui empêchaient toute méthode moderne de lire ce qui se trouvait sur les disquettes.
Après avoir reçu l'ordinateur et les disquettes spécialement formatées, les ingénieurs de DriveSavers ont travaillé à la mise au point d'une méthode d'extraction des données. Il n'y avait pas de manuel d'utilisation pour l'ordinateur, ni de documentation technique pour les guider.

Il a fallu plus de trois mois à l'équipe d'ingénieurs de DriveSavers pour développer un logiciel capable de lire les disques. Même si les ingénieurs ont réussi à décoder le formatage inhabituel, la lecture des quelque 200 disques a été un travail fastidieux qui a duré près d'un an.

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.”

Read the original article at http://theslanted.com/2016/01/21927/star-trek-floppy-disks-gene-roddenberry/