Continuation Part 19: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Grinder]

First off, yes. A break in, maybe, but not a burglary. ..you know, like at the nursery.
As for the drives I did not look. I just remember discussing it on several occasions.

I also don't see anything wrong with CD's book. The drives were damage. The recovery of the data from the drives came later. Yes, it's close. The smoke sounds like an exaggeration though.

Tesla the expert for the defense wrote in March of 2008 that all but Amanda's drive was recovered. In 2010 CD publishes a book that says Meredith's was not recovered.

So you are suggesting that if you came home and there were all the signs of a break-in/burglary you wouldn't call the cops. Unlike the nursery there were signs of a break-in not just illegal entry (trespass) and according to the kids the room had been tossed, you know, like what a burglar does.

Coming back to the hard drives, you stated that it had been widely known of the recovery. I believe you said partial which doesn't line up with what the defense expert wrote and i have shown you that two authors of TCN books were still saying more than one drive destroyed over two years after the expert's report.

ETA - CD said destroyed not damaged but what's in a word? Lalalalala

 

[Numbers]

Oh, so he only lost face. No biggie, I guess (except in Italy).

Not much of an effort now for the ECtHR to follow suit and hold that Mignini and his henchman violated Knox's human rights. I mean, the talking point used to be that the ECtHR wouldn't want to embarrass Italy by making such a finding, but shoot, Italy itself just said the same thing. All the ECtHR has to say now is "we agree with what those Italian guys said". Easy peasy.

Exactly correct. The censure of Mignini by the Italian CSM for violating Raffaele's human rights by denying him counsel after his arrest means that the ECHR will have a parallel case for Amanda.

It's just a matter of time before Amanda's case comes before the ECHR and there will be a judgment that Italy violated her human rights by wrongfully convicting her of calunnia.

 

[acbytesla]

Tesla the expert for the defense wrote in March of 2008 that all but Amanda's drive was recovered. In 2010 CD publishes a book that says Meredith's was not recovered.

So you are suggesting that if you came home and there were all the signs of a break-in/burglary you wouldn't call the cops. Unlike the nursery there were signs of a break-in not just illegal entry (trespass) and according to the kids the room had been tossed, you know, like what a burglar does.

Coming back to the hard drives, you stated that it had been widely known of the recovery. I believe you said partial which doesn't line up with what the defense expert wrote and i have shown you that two authors of TCN books were still saying more than one drive destroyed over two years after the expert's report.

ETA - CD said destroyed not damaged but what's in a word? Lalalalala

One, about immediately calling the police. No. For many reasons. When you live with a lot of roommates, one is always forgetting to do things like locking the front door or flushing a toilet. Also, maybe it's because I'm too cynical and I have been the victim of a few burglaries as well as more than a few practical jokes. I've also played a few jokes. I know from experience that calling the police after a burglary is more a formality than it is any thing else. The burglar is long gone and this would be for insurance or recovery purposes more than anything. And I'm probably more suspicious that someone is playing a practical joke on me than it being the real thing.

As for the flowery speech of writers...oh well. Were the drives burnt up in a fire and totally unrecognizable as disk drives? No but destroyed is not necessarily the wrong word. Let me describe the process of trying to recover data from an un-working drive. The original drive is carefully dismantled and the platters in the drive are removed and installed in a new drive of the same model with its platters removed. The new drive is now reassembled and with a little luck the data is recoverable.

Were the original drives destroyed? I'd agree that's probably an overstatement but not totally wrong.

 

[Grinder]

One, about immediately calling the police. No. For many reasons. When you live with a lot of roommates, one is always forgetting to do things like locking the front door or flushing a toilet. Also, maybe it's because I'm too cynical and I have been the victim of a few burglaries as well as more than a few practical jokes. I've also played a few jokes. I know from experience that calling the police after a burglary is more a formality than it is any thing else. The burglar is long gone and this would be for insurance or recovery purposes more than anything. And I'm probably more suspicious that someone is playing a practical joke on me than it being the real thing.

As for the flowery speech of writers...oh well. Were the drives burnt up in a fire and totally unrecognizable as disk drives? No but destroyed is not necessarily the wrong word. Let me describe the process of trying to recover data from an un-working drive. The original drive is carefully dismantled and the platters in the drive are removed and installed in a new drive of the same model with its platters removed. The new drive is now reassembled and with a little luck the data is recoverable.

Were the original drives destroyed? I'd agree that's probably an overstatement but not totally wrong.

Tesla please read the defense expert on amandaknoxcase.com. The expert seems to be saying the problem wasn't with the hard drives but the BIOS of the machines. I'm no expert on computers so I allow a misread on my part. Go check it.

Destroyed wasn't just an overstatement it was wrong and if with knowledge a lie. CD has no excuse for getting it wrong in 2010 two years after the defense expert's report and a year after the trial was over.

Nina in 2012 wrote: They pulled out the hard drives and hooked them up to a device that makes copies of hard drives . Incredibly, they accidentally hooked up the hard drives to the wrong side of the device, the side that delivers electrical voltage, rather than the side designed to record data. Smoke may or may not have erupted but in short order, three hard drives were fried

Damaged maybe, fried no way.

Most people have never experienced or done a burglary prank. People don't leave doors wide open with a window smashed and the room tossed as normal roommates. One doesn't expect the police to rush in and nab the perps in a matter of hours but I would say that I would definitely call especially if the room wasn't mine. They did in fact call shortly after the broken window was discovered. Btw, the police would tell you not to enter a burglarized house.

How often have you had a roommate break a window in pranking you?

 

[Welshman]

More rapid fire bs from Vixen. That's about a dozen posts where she says things that have no probative value or suggests things that are not true. It really is too bad that one cannot be suspended for making bald face lies. The lie is that Raffaele dipped his shoes in bleach. Where is the proof of this? Is it in the case file? Did Stefanoni test the soles of Raffaele's shoes for bleach? No. What kind of person argues a murder case constantly lying about the facts?

Raffaele called the police before they arrived. That is a fact. Even the Postal Police didn't think much was amiss. Vixen's argument is essentially that Amanda and Raffaele should have known simply by a door being open, a broken window and poop in the toilet that there was a burglary..

And that they needed to be in some kind of hurry to report it. Really? What's the hurry? It's not an emergency situation, so I don't think there is any hurry. It is that Meredith isn't responding that is causing alarm.

Their delay reflects more that natural desire not to end up being embarrassed about probably blowing a situation out of proportion.

Vixen constantly lies in her posts and has the cheek to accuse Amanda and Raffaele of lying. If the case against Amanda and Raffaele was such a slam dunk, why is it that eight years on the PGP are still unable to argue their case without resorting to lying?

 

[Bill Williams]

Raffaele called the police before they arrived. That is a fact. Even the Postal Police didn't think much was amiss. Vixen's argument is essentially that Amanda and Raffaele should have known simply by a door being open, a broken window and poop in the toilet that there was a burglary..

And that they needed to be in some kind of hurry to report it. Really? What's the hurry? It's not an emergency situation, so I don't think there is any hurry. It is that Meredith isn't responding that is causing alarm.

Filomena was the only person at the scene in the early afternoon of Nov 2, 2007, who departed from what everyone else observed.... a confusing scene.

This even includes the conundrum expressed **before** the grisly discovery - what kind of a burglar doesn't steal anything? It is perhaps probable that everyone shared that thought.

When Filomena found out that the Postal Police were returning Meredith's phones, Filomena was the only person who put together 2+2: that something must be the matter with Meredith, because she'd never have departed from those phones given her mother's health.

Even with this, the postal police refused to break down Meredith's door and Filomena had to badger someone else to do it.

Up until that moment there had not been a **burglary** per se. There'd been a break-in. Through Filomena's window. No one knew for sure what it was about until the door was broken down.

What it turned out to be was (in all probability) a burglary interrupted by the return of one of the residents. The rest is part of the horrid 8 years for the Kerchers, and a fight for liberty by two falsely accused.

 

[acbytesla]

Tesla please read the defense expert on amandaknoxcase.com. The expert seems to be saying the problem wasn't with the hard drives but the BIOS of the machines. I'm no expert on computers so I allow a misread on my part. Go check it.

Destroyed wasn't just an overstatement it was wrong and if with knowledge a lie. CD has no excuse for getting it wrong in 2010 two years after the defense expert's report and a year after the trial was over.

Nina in 2012 wrote: They pulled out the hard drives and hooked them up to a device that makes copies of hard drives . Incredibly, they accidentally hooked up the hard drives to the wrong side of the device, the side that delivers electrical voltage, rather than the side designed to record data. Smoke may or may not have erupted but in short order, three hard drives were fried

Damaged maybe, fried no way.

Most people have never experienced or done a burglary prank. People don't leave doors wide open with a window smashed and the room tossed as normal roommates. One doesn't expect the police to rush in and nab the perps in a matter of hours but I would say that I would definitely call especially if the room wasn't mine. They did in fact call shortly after the broken window was discovered. Btw, the police would tell you not to enter a burglarized house.

How often have you had a roommate break a window in pranking you?

1. I can't find it. Please provide a link. Without looking I can say the problem isn't or wasn't with the computer's BIOS, but the disk drive's BIOS or firmware that communicates what the data on the drive to the computer itself. Now, please forgive me if this is not 100 percent accurate as I'm doing this from memory. I read the court's report on the drives. ( not sure what court) The firm hIred to pull the data from the laptops removed the drives from the laptops and connected the drives to the device. (I forget the name of the device but Charlie and I discussed this in detail at one time) The drives were I believe IDE drives as opposed to the SATA drives used predominantly today. Laptops use smaller drives than their desktop counterparts, they also use a different voltage 3.3 volts vs 5 volts. It is believed that the tech used the wrong cable interface and it resulted in too much voltage shorting the circuit board on the disk drive. Saying the drive is "fried"is how pretty much everyone would describe the drives. Although I doubt the drive would smoke. In fact I doubt you would ever notice anything as it happened. Static shock can also "fry" any circuit board and this is why wearing a grounding strap is recommended, even though most of the time techs don't .

I'll address your other questions/points in my next post.

 

[Grinder]

1. I can't find it. Please provide a link. Without looking I can say the problem isn't or wasn't with the computer's BIOS, but the disk drive's BIOS or firmware that communicates what the data on the drive to the computer itself. Now, please forgive me if this is not 100 percent accurate as I'm doing this from memory. I read the court's report on the drives. ( not sure what court) The firm hIred to pull the data from the laptops removed the drives from the laptops and connected the drives to the device. (I forget the name of the device but Charlie and I discussed this in detail at one time) The drives were I believe IDE drives as opposed to the SATA drives used predominantly today. Laptops use smaller drives than their desktop counterparts, they also use a different voltage 3.3 volts vs 5 volts. It is believed that the tech used the wrong cable interface and it resulted in too much voltage shorting the circuit board on the disk drive. Saying the drive is "fried"is how pretty much everyone would describe the drives. Although I doubt the drive would smoke. In fact I doubt you would ever notice anything as it happened. Static shock can also "fry" any circuit board and this is why wearing a grounding strap is recommended, even though most of the time techs don't .

I'll address your other questions/points in my next post.

http://www.amandaknoxcase.com/evidence-destroyed/

Following the tests carried out, by various interveners, it therefore appears that the Toshiba disk belonging to Miss A Knox’s Toshiba-brand laptop was damaged with problems evident in the electronic board, which resulted as being inactive, just like the other two. While the contents of two of the three disks have been recovered, following the Krollontrak company’s diagnosis, the third disk seems to have been also damaged in its component mechanics, while CBL Data’s and Recovery Tech’s diagnoses confirm that the third disk has been damaged in its electronic component. In reality, the damaged component is the electronic board, where an integrated circuit sits, sometimes referred to as “BIOS”, containing the binary code that allows access to the data, calibration, writing and reading. This technical specification belongs to the Toshiba manufacturing house, a proprietary [page] technology. The electronic board and the binary data contents of the disk being inextricably linked and intertwined, and the Toshiba logic board being damaged, it has therefore been impossible to recover it. Only a possible intervention by the parent company or its licentiate, by means of supplying the binary/BIOS code, would be able to justify a further intervention. It is however truly incomprehensible that three hard drive units, differing among themselves as to capacity, produced by among the most quoted manufacturers, belonging to and operating on three different laptops, could all three end up damaged in a similar manner and all three react in the same manner to an attempt at reading the data by an external disk controller run by the Operating System residing on an IBM PC furnished by the IAC/CNR Institute and of relative utility for data recovery.

Little hint for you; put a sentence in quote marks into your search engine and if the quote exists you will be taken directly to it.

 

[acbytesla]

Most people have never experienced or done a burglary prank. People don't leave doors wide open with a window smashed and the room tossed as normal roommates. One doesn't expect the police to rush in and nab the perps in a matter of hours but I would say that I would definitely call especially if the room wasn't mine. They did in fact call shortly after the broken window was discovered. Btw, the police would tell you not to enter a burglarized house.

How often have you had a roommate break a window in pranking you?

Do you have any idea how many times over the years I've returned home to find the door unlocked or even wide open? Personally I think it's embarrassing. Because I'm probably years reason for the oversight. You're right that the police would tell you not to enter. That's because they don't want to see happen to the resident what happened to Meredith. Still, this scenario is in fact a very common occurrence. My friend the cop tells me has responded and "cleared" homes and businesses many times.

No one has ever played a prank on me which included a broken window but I wouldn't put it past some of them. I have come home to find a window broken though.

 

[acbytesla]

http://www.amandaknoxcase.com/evidence-destroyed/

Following the tests carried out, by various interveners, it therefore appears that the Toshiba disk belonging to Miss A Knox’s Toshiba-brand laptop was damaged with problems evident in the electronic board, which resulted as being inactive, just like the other two. While the contents of two of the three disks have been recovered, following the Krollontrak company’s diagnosis, the third disk seems to have been also damaged in its component mechanics, while CBL Data’s and Recovery Tech’s diagnoses confirm that the third disk has been damaged in its electronic component. In reality, the damaged component is the electronic board, where an integrated circuit sits, sometimes referred to as “BIOS”, containing the binary code that allows access to the data, calibration, writing and reading. This technical specification belongs to the Toshiba manufacturing house, a proprietary [page] technology. The electronic board and the binary data contents of the disk being inextricably linked and intertwined, and the Toshiba logic board being damaged, it has therefore been impossible to recover it. Only a possible intervention by the parent company or its licentiate, by means of supplying the binary/BIOS code, would be able to justify a further intervention. It is however truly incomprehensible that three hard drive units, differing among themselves as to capacity, produced by among the most quoted manufacturers, belonging to and operating on three different laptops, could all three end up damaged in a similar manner and all three react in the same manner to an attempt at reading the data by an external disk controller run by the Operating System residing on an IBM PC furnished by the IAC/CNR Institute and of relative utility for data recovery.

Little hint for you; put a sentence in quote marks into your search engine and if the quote exists you will be taken directly to it.

Thanks for the hint. ( I knew that) But don't mind the suggestion. I just went to your original cite and saw no reference for disk drives on that page. I figured the easiest way was to ask.

 

[JREF2010]

Tesla please read the defense expert on amandaknoxcase.com. The expert seems to be saying the problem wasn't with the hard drives but the BIOS of the machines. I'm no expert on computers so I allow a misread on my part. Go check it.

Destroyed wasn't just an overstatement it was wrong and if with knowledge a lie. CD has no excuse for getting it wrong in 2010 two years after the defense expert's report and a year after the trial was over.

Nina in 2012 wrote: They pulled out the hard drives and hooked them up to a device that makes copies of hard drives . Incredibly, they accidentally hooked up the hard drives to the wrong side of the device, the side that delivers electrical voltage, rather than the side designed to record data. Smoke may or may not have erupted but in short order, three hard drives were fried

Damaged maybe, fried no way.

Most people have never experienced or done a burglary prank. People don't leave doors wide open with a window smashed and the room tossed as normal roommates. One doesn't expect the police to rush in and nab the perps in a matter of hours but I would say that I would definitely call especially if the room wasn't mine. They did in fact call shortly after the broken window was discovered. Btw, the police would tell you not to enter a burglarized house.

How often have you had a roommate break a window in pranking you?

Raffaele mentions this in the interview- Nov 22, 2015

Let us pause a moment on false clues and misinterpreted that you describe in the book.
An example are the computers that were seized me. From computer engineer, I was astonished when I was told that the technicians, who were conducting the investigation, casually they burned the hard drives of computers seized. I can assure you that the power connectors of a hard disk, once removed, have a universal standard plug-and there are no cables to be placed in power in the wrong way. What I was informed there was no point. It really takes great skill to be able to burn a hard drive through a power cable, without tampering voluntarily. Another episode: the evaluation on the shoes that I seized the police station.

http://www.unita.tv/interviste/raffaele-sollecito-vi-racconto-lingiustizia-che-ho-subito/

My own experience doing hard drives, its the standard plug only allows one way to be plugged in. The whole frying/burning up several circuit boards by "experts" ....can only be done intentionally, imo.

I wish they would have filmed these idiots at work.

 

[Grinder]

Raffaele mentions this in the interview- Nov 22, 2015

Let us pause a moment on false clues and misinterpreted that you describe in the book.
An example are the computers that were seized me. From computer engineer, I was astonished when I was told that the technicians, who were conducting the investigation, casually they burned the hard drives of computers seized. I can assure you that the power connectors of a hard disk, once removed, have a universal standard plug-and there are no cables to be placed in power in the wrong way. What I was informed there was no point. It really takes great skill to be able to burn a hard drive through a power cable, without tampering voluntarily. Another episode: the evaluation on the shoes that I seized the police station.

http://www.unita.tv/interviste/raffaele-sollecito-vi-racconto-lingiustizia-che-ho-subito/

My own experience doing hard drives, its the standard plug only allows one way to be plugged in. The whole frying/burning up several circuit boards by "experts" ....can only be done intentionally, imo.

I wish they would have filmed these idiots at work.

I don't even play a computer expert on TV nor did I stay in a Residence Inn last night but the way I read the defense expert it seem the BIOS was damaged not the hard drives. I don't see how the BIOS of the computer could be damaged if the hard drive had been removed. Tesla said at some point that there is a BIOS on the hard drive, which to no one's surprise means nothing to me.

 

[acbytesla]

Raffaele mentions this in the interview- Nov 22, 2015

Let us pause a moment on false clues and misinterpreted that you describe in the book.
An example are the computers that were seized me. From computer engineer, I was astonished when I was told that the technicians, who were conducting the investigation, casually they burned the hard drives of computers seized. I can assure you that the power connectors of a hard disk, once removed, have a universal standard plug-and there are no cables to be placed in power in the wrong way. What I was informed there was no point. It really takes great skill to be able to burn a hard drive through a power cable, without tampering voluntarily. Another episode: the evaluation on the shoes that I seized the police station.

http://www.unita.tv/interviste/raffaele-sollecito-vi-racconto-lingiustizia-che-ho-subito/

My own experience doing hard drives, its the standard plug only allows one way to be plugged in. The whole frying/burning up several circuit boards by "experts" ....can only be done intentionally, imo.

I wish they would have filmed these idiots at work.

Me too, they are almost always keyed so this kind of thing is impossible. I seem to recall that it was a homemade cable. But I could be wrong.

 

[acbytesla]

I don't even play a computer expert on TV nor did I stay in a Residence Inn last night but the way I read the defense expert it seem the BIOS was damaged not the hard drives. I don't see how the BIOS of the computer could be damaged if the hard drive had been removed. Tesla said at some point that there is a BIOS on the hard drive, which to no one's surprise means nothing to me.

The computer has its own BIOS chip as do devices such as disk drives, CD or DVD drives or printers. The chip manages the flow of data. It's a piece of firmware that manages the flow of data to and from the device.

BIOS: Basic Input Output System

I know this doesn't thoroughly explain it but I'd really lose my audience if I tried on this forum. But for the sake of this discussion just think of it as a tiny circuit board controlling the heads that float over and read/write the data on the platters of the disk drives.

But the point is that the overvoltage shortcircuited the electronics on the disk drive. But the data remained on the platters.

 

[Grinder]

The computer has its own BIOS chip as do devices such as disk drives, CD or DVD drives or printers. The chip manages the flow of data. It's a piece of firmware that manages the flow of data to and from the device.

BIOS: Basic Input Output System

I know this doesn't thoroughly explain it but I'd really lose my audience if I tried on this forum. But for the sake of this discussion just think of it as a tiny circuit board controlling the heads that float over and read/write the data on the platters of the disk drives.

But the point is that the overvoltage shortcircuited the electronics on the disk drive. But the data remained on the platters.

While this doesn't excuse or exonerate the technicians one iota, it seems the hard drives were less than fried in lay terms. It would seem that engine wasn't fried but the distributor had been burned up. It would seem by the date of the report and when the drives were first looked at that it didn't take long to get the data off the drives. I definitely remember talk of more data being recovered from Raf's but the prosecution objected. The experts report makes it sound like they got all by then. There could easily be more to the report I haven't seen.

 

[acbytesla]

While this doesn't excuse or exonerate the technicians one iota, it seems the hard drives were less than fried in lay terms. It would seem that engine wasn't fried but the distributor had been burned up. It would seem by the date of the report and when the drives were first looked at that it didn't take long to get the data off the drives. I definitely remember talk of more data being recovered from Raf's but the prosecution objected. The experts report makes it sound like they got all by then. There could easily be more to the report I haven't seen.

Honestly Grinder, it's an expression we use all the time. In a way it's a very accurate description for when a circuit board fails. It's always an over voltage or short that caused the problem. There are companies that specializes in repairing them. But 99.9999 percent of the time it's not cost effective. But I've bought fried boards and sent them to these companies and a $500 repair allowed me to resell a $25K circuit board.

 

[Grinder]

Honestly Grinder, it's an expression we use all the time. In a way it's a very accurate description for when a circuit board fails. It's always an over voltage or short that caused the problem. There are companies that specializes in repairing them. But 99.9999 percent of the time it's not cost effective. But I've bought fried boards and sent them to these companies and a $500 repair allowed me to resell a $25K circuit board.

Tesla - While this doesn't excuse or exonerate the technicians one iota, it seems the hard drives were less than fried in lay terms

Both Nina and CD reported the computers were destroyed, one even postulated that the drive smoked. which seems proof that they heard they were fried and like most lay people thought meant kaput, done, wiped-out, etc. It also shows they didn't read the defense expert's report. I would say there was no reason with their main contacts that they shouldn't have known.

But I've bought fried boards and sent them to these companies and a $500 repair allowed me to resell a $25K circuit board.

Wow. That sounds like highway robbery.

 

[acbytesla]

Tesla - While this doesn't excuse or exonerate the technicians one iota, it seems the hard drives were less than fried in lay terms

Both Nina and CD reported the computers were destroyed, one even postulated that the drive smoked. which seems proof that they heard they were fried and like most lay people thought meant kaput, done, wiped-out, etc. It also shows they didn't read the defense expert's report. I would say there was no reason with their main contacts that they shouldn't have known.



Wow. That sounds like highway robbery.

No, it's more like luck with a little skill. There are some Telco routers that use to sell for a 40K+ with 12 slots for expansion (very much like a PC) and those circuit boards that go in those slots use to sell from anywhere from say $2500 to $100K each depending on their functionality. A half million dollar switch was certainly high end but there is a market for them.

I'm not a tech Grinder, but I am very technically oriented. I worked with and communicated with techs as fellow employees and customers. I'm used to seeing all this equipment disassembled into components and sold the parts and full systems. Sometimes the collection of parts were worth more than the whole. I've bought full brand new systems or switches from manufacturers and stripped them to sell the parts.

I know you think CD and Nina's description is way way over the top yet to me it seems spot on although "destroyed" sounds more like someone took a hammer to the drives.

Any way you look at it. The tech hired took functioning disk drives and made them non-functioning. It cost far more to recover the data from those fried drives than you would pay for any new drive, probably more than you would pay for the laptop.

 

[LondonJohn]

While this doesn't excuse or exonerate the technicians one iota, it seems the hard drives were less than fried in lay terms. It would seem that engine wasn't fried but the distributor had been burned up. It would seem by the date of the report and when the drives were first looked at that it didn't take long to get the data off the drives. I definitely remember talk of more data being recovered from Raf's but the prosecution objected. The experts report makes it sound like they got all by then. There could easily be more to the report I haven't seen.

But in fact it's an inappropriate analogy to compare this with a car engine and the distributor (not that modern cars have distributors any more, but still....).

The problem is this: the information on the (magnetic) hard drives is all stored in addressable sectors. As a simple analogy, think of it like thousands and thousands of little boxes, each with its own identifying number written on it (its "address"), and each of which contain small portions of information.

But only the central electronics of the hard drive (in the form of hardware, BIOS and OS) knows which information is stored in which "box". And to complicate matters much further, any particular string of information gets split up and placed into "boxes" all over the place - for example, a letter which says "Hello I am in Amsterdam, are you well?" might (simplistically put) have "Hello" put into Box 10342, "I" into box 71420, "am" into Box 63369, and so on. And only the central "brain" of the hard drive knows which of the boxes each of the words has been placed into, and in which order. Thus, if anyone wants to retrieve the letter, one needs the hard drive's "brain" to retrieve the parts of the letter in the right order from the right "boxes" (in this simplistic example, even a slight mistake from the "brain" might lead to the letter being incorrectly reassembled as "Hello, I am well, you are in Amsterdam".

So in a very real sense, if you fry the "brain" of the hard drive, it's immensely difficult - in many instances impossible in practice - to retrieve the data from the magnetic disc, even if the data itself is uncorrupted. All that you're left with, when you don't have the means to understand what is stored where, is an unintelligible cacophony of 1s and 0s, with no means of reassembling those 1s and 0s back into the correct, readable order.

 

[Desert Fox]

So in a very real sense, if you fry the "brain" of the hard drive, it's immensely difficult - in many instances impossible in practice - to retrieve the data from the magnetic disc, even if the data itself is uncorrupted. All that you're left with, when you don't have the means to understand what is stored where, is an unintelligible cacophony of 1s and 0s, with no means of reassembling those 1s and 0s back into the correct, readable order.

And of course the Italian police refused to allow the builders of the hard drive to see if they could recover it.