16 May
2003
16 May
'03
7:04 a.m.
Although the storage medium transferred to may have a shorter life, the
information itself may have a longer life. As the previous poster said, he
can store all his old 8-bit stuff in a tiny corner of his hard disk. That
can get stored to CD. Now write-able DVD has arrived, it can be copied to an
even smaller corner of a DVD. When the next, even more dense, medium
arrives, it may be copied to an increasingly smaller corner of that. As long
as this copying process occurs more often than the life-length of each
medium, there's no problem. Keeping a copy of each intervening storage media
gives you your backups too.
There is a danger of leaving the information on the original only, as
exemplified by the problems with the BBC's (UK) doomsday project
(http://www.si.umich.edu/CAMILEON/domesday/press.html), which fortunately
were solved. Even though it may be theoretically possible to resurrect the
data, it might be very difficult.
paul
-----Original Message-----
From: ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk [mailto:ard@p850ug1.demon.co.uk]
Sent: 12 May 2003 20:53
To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: VCFe Munich report
Hans' presentation on storing vintage computer
data as XML made me
realise that the most important thing is to get everything preserved,
and then work out what to do with it. I could store everything I've
ever written on an 8-bit computer in a corner of my existing hard drive
and not even notice it was there. I've got to dig out all those KCS
cassettes, ASR33 printouts and even a few bits of paper tape and get
them transferred.
I can assure you those paper tapes will still be readable long after your
hard disk had headcrashed!. Why do people insist on transfering reliable
storage media onto modern, unreliable stuff? It's the same with
photographs and cine films -- people transfer them to CDs and DVDs. The
originals have a much longer life...
-tony