8 Oct
2005
8 Oct
'05
9:18 a.m.
On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, Scott Stevens wrote:
Maybe what's needed is a lower density format
and/or a redundant
filesystem using the current media. Surely a redundant filesystem or
lower density encoding scheme that only tried to fit 88K on a 3-1/2" HD
floppy diskette would succeed in having MUCH greater longetivity. Maybe
there's a 'market' for something like that, i.e. a disk format where
data is written redundantly on ten zones of the drive or something. It
really should be mostly a software problem.
Redundant filesystems can help substantially with localized damage.
Unfortunately, they won't help in cases where the entire disk craps out.
FAT filesystems have two copies of the F.A.T.
But,...
1) What is the worst possible place to put the second copy? (adjacent to
the first)
2) For a redundant filesystem to achieve its advantages, there must be
software that can recognize problems, and switch to alternate copies.
There actually exist some floppy R.A.I.D. implementations!
Depending on configuration, that could provide full recoverability,
if only one disk fails at a time.