15 Mar
2006
15 Mar
'06
10:29 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
How about this as an arbitrary test of the
recoverabiliy of a medium? What
I call the "pinking shears" test. Maybe some remember it from an episode
from "The New Detectives" TV series.
Take the medium and cut it into randomly sized peices, with the mean being
about the size of a postage stamp, using pinking shears. Pick up most, but
not all, of the peices, throw them into an envelope and ship them across
the country. How much data can you reconstruct from the fragments?
You know, floppies aren't all that bad for storing data...
Not sure I understand your point, because floppies wouldn't pass the
pinking shears test either. Come to think of it, I can't think of *any*
media that would survive that test except for maybe paper.
The reason your 8" disks are still good after 20 years is simply the
surface density ratio (meaning, less data was stored on a larger surface
area). The only kind of "fading" failures I've hever had were on
high-density 3.5" media, where much more data is packed more closely
together. Just my experience, I could be wrong...
--
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