20 Nov
2021
20 Nov
'21
8:37 a.m.
Archive.org, bitsavers.org, etc will all have to be
converted too. I say
take it upon yourself to preserve whatever it is you deem worthy and make a
plan and prepare for how it will be maintained after you're gone. Family,
computer, documents, whatever. Don't rely on someone else to do it for
you.
This was an interesting topic when I was at Science magazine: How to
preserve the archives. Everyone wants to get your paper archives, rip
them up, "scan them" and store them. However our first vendor who had
only the digital stuff we made in the 1980's onward went and had a "hard
disk failure" in their RAID drive that wasn't detected for years. Turns
out all the thumbnails were all that was left; fortunately we still had
the backup tapes but those easily could have been tossed.
Now I'm sure the "Google project" archived all the paper stuff but
Google will eventually go away just like Jeeves, MySpace, Yahoo Groups,
and so forth. Or they may forget and "lose" them in which case the data
is gone forever.
But what do you store it on? Big optical laserdiscs (80's)? Those had
bit rot after 20 years or so. Magtape? Sure, find the 7 track tapes from
Apollo and find a 7 track tape reader. Taravan/QIC02/Exabyte
Monster/Contemporary Cybernetics 8505? Good luck finding a working unit
and if you took advantage of hardware compression you'd better have the
module....
Best way to store? Paper. I recommended putting everything on baked
tablets and burying it in the center of a desert, they didn't go that
way but it's a valuable option. Well, until someone digs it up, puts it
in the "National Museum" and ISIS/Taliban/the usual book burning
bastards burns the place down....
C