CNN has an interesting article about a fellow who was able to recover data from one of the drives on the Space Shuttle Columbia that was pretty damaged during the breakup and recovery. When they got the drive, it was two hunks of metal stuck together, burned with melted edges. 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. But, 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. Here’s the interesting part: the data hadn’t been written because the computer was running DOS, which does not scatter data all over drives. He put the platters in a new drive, and recovered 99% of the data.
So, there are advantages of running DOS. Not many, but at least one.
