A recent discovery of 200 disks of previously unseen data from the late Gene Roddenberry.[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]

Discovery of 200 floppy disks containing documents written by the late Gene Roddenberry have been discovered as part of his estate.

Gene Rodenberry who died in 1991, left behind many things including a collection of 200 floppy disks. The floppy disks are 5.25 inch double-density disks with 160kb capacity, which have been long considered obsolete. DriveSavers Inc., a computer hardware data recovery, digital forensics, and eDiscovery firm located in Novato, California, was hired by Rodenberry’s estate to recover the data from the discovered disks.

DriveSavers have been working to recover the dataRoddenberry used a pair of unknown brand custom PCs, running a custom operating system. DriveSavers engineers did not have access to either of the custom PCs as one no longer functions and the other was sold years ago. Modern systems were incapable of reading the data on the disks. Most of the floppies were formatted in CP/M(Control Program for Microcomputers), but some were formatted in DOS(Disk Operating Sytem). Approximately 30 disks were physically damaged, but most of the damage was to empty portions of the disk according to Mike Cobb, DriveSavers Director of Engineering.

The DriveSavers engineering team believes that around 95 percent of the data on the damaged disks has been recovered. The 200 disks yielded about 2-3MB of previously unknown data. File sizes were much smaller during the 80’s than they are now. Data that was recovered had to be converted to a file format that is readable in modern systems. The specifics of the data on the disks is unknown and Drive Savers Inc is bound by a confidentiality agreement. Roddenberry’s Estate declined to comment as to what was contained on the disks or what their plans are with the data.

2016 is the 50th Anniversary of the original series of Star Trek, and Star Trek: Beyond is scheduled to be released later this year. The original Star Trek series ran from 1966-1969.

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