Word: gaidano
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Hard drives are the collective memories of our cleverest machines, the indispensable intellects of the information age. Yet Scott Gaidano, 58, president of DriveSavers, detests them. Most any data-storage device is, to his mind, a ridiculous piece of machinery. Ask him why, and he will pound his desk with frustration as he tells you how obscenely sensitive it is: a hunk of metal whirring around at 10,000 r.p.m. that dies if you drop it from 5 ft. The more we store on them--these days, everything from tax records to baby pictures--the more painful their death...
...Gaidano's loathing for storage media stems from a lost batch of electronic love letters. Back in 1984, when he was working for a company called Jasmine Technologies, he and his buddies used to go water-skiing on weekends, taking their first-generation Macintoshes and trading software. Gaidano still remembers that sinking feeling the weekend he booted up his Mac and saw the sad-face icon, indicating all was not well with the single floppy disc inside. Every precious byte, including all Gaidano's romantic correspondence, was gone. "I was all freaked out," he says. "Nobody could tell me what...