Data recovered from hard drive on the Columbia disaster

[madinmaryland]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/09/columbia.data.ap/index.html

..snip

Edwards had reason for pessimism. Not only were the drive's metal and plastic elements scorched, but the seal on the side that keeps out dirt and dust also had melted. That made the drive vulnerable to particles that can scratch the tiny materials embedded inside, destroying their ability to retain data in endless 0s or 1s, depending on their magnetic charge.

However, at the core of the drive, the spinning metal platters that actually store data were not warped. They had been gouged and pitted, but the 340-megabyte drive was only half full, and the damage happened where data had not yet been written.

Edwards attributes that to a lucky twist: The computer was running an ancient operating system, DOS, which does not scatter data all over drives as other approaches do.

After cleaning the platters with a chemical solution, Edwards used them in a newly built drive. The process -- two days from start to finish -- captured 99 percent of the drive's information.

..snip



:wow:

Great advertisement for Bill Gates software!!1!!

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Wow! That's so amazing.

[crimsonblue]

2. too bad it's been all downhill for Microsoft since DOS...

Windows 95 and 98 were good, but CE, ME, 2000, XP, and especiall Vista suck hardcore. Why the hell does a multibillion piece of technology have a $200 hard drive in the first place?

[SteppingRazor]

3. Because the multibillion-dollar piece of technology was built in the 1970s? n/t

[crimsonblue]

6. If you think the computer systems at time of crash

were the same as the ones originally put in, then you are very naive.

[DS1]

4. 200 dollars?

It's obsolete, but it was probably a good model that lasted forever, as it just proved, so they stick with it.

[crimsonblue]

5. It's idiotic to be using HDD instead of SSDs.

There were many commercially available SSD's available as long as 10 years ago... they're more durable, require less power, and provide no torquing action. I guess the HDD probably cost them $1000-$2000, but still...

[Deja Q]

8. Under conventional means, yes...

but they are plastic. That hard drive is all metal and the platters survived. Under the same conditions, I suspect the SSD would melt.

[Xipe Totec]

10. You know any SSDs that have been certified for use in space?

Have you any idea how much it costs to certify a piece of hardware for use in space?

I would learn a little more about certification before using the term idiotic so liberally.

[jmowreader]

13. It doesn't have a $200 hard drive in it

This is probably a CDC Wren hard drive. Those cost about $10/megabyte, so at 340MB those drives were around $3400-$3500.

[Deja Q]

7. Incredible.

I'd still run a RAID system as a local NAS device, or beam it back to Mission Control, but it's all good...

[Fredda Weinberg]

9. DOS came from Digital Research, not Microsoft. The Gee Whiz

boys cloned it @ IBM's request. Yup, decent enough until Unix showed us how to organize file systems properly.

[Xipe Totec]

11. Tim Patterson @ Sierra Systems made DOS

CPM is the one that came from Galactic Digital Research.

[Fredda Weinberg]

12. Read and learn ...

The only commercial software that existed for the board was a standalone version of Microsoft BASIC. The standard CP/M operating system at the time was not available for this CPU and without a true operating system, sales were slow. Paterson began work on QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) in April 1980 to fill that void, copying the APIs of CP/M from sources including the published CP/M manual so that it would be highly compatible. QDOS was soon renamed as 86-DOS. Version 0.10 was complete by July 1980. By version 1.14 86-DOS had grown to 4,000 lines of assembly code.<1> In December 1980 Microsoft secured the rights to market 86-DOS to other hardware manufacturers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Paterson

[Xipe Totec]

14. You conveniently skipped the first paragraph:

Tim Paterson (born 1956) is an American computer programmer, best known as the original author of MS-DOS, the most widely used operating system in the 1980s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Paterson

And...

IBM tried to contact Kildall for a meeting, executives met with Mrs. Kildall who refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement. IBM soon returned to Bill Gates and gave Microsoft the contract to write the new operating system, one that would eventually wipe Kildall's CP/M out of common use.

The "Microsoft Disk Operating System" or MS-DOS was based on QDOS, the "Quick and Dirty Operating System" written by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products, for their prototype Intel 8086 based computer.

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa033099.htm

The piece you are missing, because you had to be there when history was made instead of reading about it second hand, is that Seattle Computer Products was Sierra Systems originally.

[Fredda Weinberg]

15. I learned it in IBM's private library in Boca Raton. Worked in nearly

all the labs. Didn't forget a thing ... didn't need Wiki, but it was good to have.

[Xipe Totec]

16. Then you should know that Kildall did not create MS-DOS

And Digital Research was not the owner of MS-DOS

So what's your excuse?

[Fredda Weinberg]

18. Don't pretend - we both know I quoted from experience what we found in Wiki

And you're a sore loser. May I suggest you refrain from playing?

[kentauros]

17. And the data recovered was...?

Yes, I know the story "mentioned" it, though it was more in passing than any focus on the experiment in question:

During Columbia's fateful mission, the drive had been used to store data from a scientific experiment on the properties of liquid xenon.

Most of the information was radioed to Earth during Columbia's voyage. Edwards was able to recover the remainder, allowing researchers to publish the experiment in the April issue of a science journal, Physical Review E.

Okay, I could go searching on this April issue of Physical Review E. But since CNN had that opportunity, obviously, why not tell me more about that experiment? Sure, it's great they were able to retrieve the data; give that guy a raise. Now, report on what the applications of liquified xenon gas are for the rest of us that don't have science degrees or access to narrow-focused science journals, yet are smart/educated enough to understand the potentials of this data ;)