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Maintenance OsA maintenance Operating System (mOS) is one that can be used when normal assumptions of safety do not apply. It is typically used to recover data from corrupted or failing hardware, perform hardware diagnostics, or to manage unwanted or hostile software. Normally, an operating system (OS) may assume that all hard drives are safe to write to, may integrate various additional programs into the system, and may well run these programs automatically without user initiation. These things make for a more efficient and expandable system, but become liabilities when things go wrong. Things that go wrong fall into two three broad categories; defective hardware, corrupted file system, and malicious software. The first two require the OS to avoid writes to the hard drives, as this can further corrupt the contents. The second two require the OS to run no code from the hard drive, including itself. Three levels of risk awareness include; that within the OS's normal operation, the same OS running in a "safe" mode, and a mOS that fully addresses the risks. A true mOS will not initiate writes to the hard drives, nor will it run any code from there. In addition, it will avoid handling material from the hard drive in case there is a defect within the OS that can be exploited by the material to run as code.
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