Date : Sun, 16 Sep 2012 13:34:33 +0100
From : jumbos.bazzar@... (Mark Haysman)
Subject: Should I keep my 5.25" disks?
On the subject of CD & DVD-R - There are archival grades of disc in both
formats, although I'm not really convinced by the DVD version, as all DVD-R
media uses an organic dye. There are Gold Archive type CD-Rs which use a
high quality metallic writing surface, I bought some of these in Kodak type
when 2x speed writing was LOLOMGFAST, and the stuff on them is still 100%
readable today, on ALL of them, none have failed.
For my main PC data backup, I keep it on 2 separate external hard drives, as
well as 4x copies on CD, DVD or Blu-Ray depending on what the data is. Some
stuff is also kept online, like Flickr and in private folders on my
webspace.
In the long run though, unless you start writing 1s and 0s on pieces of
papyrus, then you can't guarantee 1000s of years of storage.
Mark.
-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Murray
Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2012 1:26 PM
To: Rob ; Patrick Hogan
Cc: bbc-micro@...
Subject: Re: [BBC-Micro] Should I keep my 5.25" disks?
Hi,
I agree with Rob. Not had a harddrive pack up on me other than old age or
dropping a pet rock on it (!), but I do believe that these bargain basement
500Mb for ?50 USB thingies are inviting trouble.
Likewise flash media. I buy SanDisk (pricey) or Verbatim (cheaper), but stay
away from things that say stuff like "PNY" on a printed sticky label. It's a
bit like car tyres, you get what you pay for.
For me, however, all of my floppies are pretty much junk. Too damp, makes a
sort of flat mould grow. Same with videotape, but this stuff seems highly
specific to magnetic media. Odd...
I think the best approach is to have backups of important data, and backups
in multiples (say 2-3 DVDs of the same stuff if it is important enough. All
you can do is take reasonable precaution.
Another warning, I am today recovering 15Gb of data from the SD in my phone.
The sick irony is I was renaming my camera video files to something other
than MOV_xxxx.MP4 before I copied them off to backup, when Windows reported
an odd error and then the data vanished. The boot sector was gibberish, the
main FAT trashed. Using testdisk-win I was able to locate the (only slightly
damaged) backup FAT to begin file recovery (which appears to have gone
well).
The moral here is: 1, backup often (!), and 2, sometimes things can go wrong
to trash your data when there isn't really anything wrong with the media.
Software glitch? Photons? Phase of the moon? Or Microsoft's lame-ass
programming? Who knows - but reasons and excuses count for little when
you're faced with "it's all gone! aaargh!".
As to your question about hanging on to the discs? Maybe. If you have the
space. One day they might have value to people running legacy systems.
Ah, home now. Got to fire up the server box and finish file recovery to
reformat/rebuild that uSD card...
Best wishes,
Rick.
Rob <robert@...> wrote:
>Well done!
>
>Personally, I'd keep them, but I am a bit of a hoarder.. Plus I
>distrust inherently modern media - I've had far too many CDRs, Hard
>drives and even flash cards fail for me to be comfortable with them.
>Although, as you've got backups in multiple locations, you're doing
>the right thing. How many are we talking about? Is it too much
>space to spare? After all, you've kept them this long anyway...
>
>Rob
>
>On 16 September 2012 12:25, Patrick Hogan <patrick.hogan@...> wrote:
>> Hi group,
>>
>> I've just finished copying the contents of all my old 5.25" Beeb floppies
>> to
>> a modern machine, and this data is now securely backed up in multiple
>> locations. I'm very impressed that they retained the data with only three
>> or
>> four errors in total - some of the disks are over 25 years old.
>>
>> This means that the floppies themselves are now no longer needed, but I
>> feel
>> some reluctance to throw them out! Has anyone else had this problem? I've
>> got a few unused blank floppies which I may hang onto "just in case", and
>> I'll also keep original software/games disks, but I think I need to be
>> firm
>> and chuck the rest as they're just taking up space and now have no use.
>>
>> Anyone care to prod me in the right direction?
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Patrick
>>
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