A frightening little bit of technology

On 6 Sep 2007 at 11:44, Al Kossow wrote: Well, I don't know. In the universe of "read-and-write unreliable media", floppies rate as pretty darned reliable from the standpoint of "How many years can elapse between writing and reading before the medium becomes unreadable?" Hard disks seem to develop problems regularly (bumpers turning to goo etc., not being able to locate the correct controller to read the old stuff), tapes seem to have all sorts of problems from QIC cartridges shedding to the wonderful experience of oxide sticking to the next layer on 1/2" 9-track tape (it really makes a mess on a 200 ips streamer). MO carts that fail mysteriously or problems locating the appropriate drive. I don't know how USB flash will fare in 30 years. Punched cards are still pretty good. I can still read the first floppies I wrote over 30 years ago just fine--and have 3.5" diskettes more than 20 years old that read just fine. Basalt tablets--now there's a reliable medium. Cheers, Chuck