vax/vms file archival ideas and suggestions

Joe Heck wrote: The way to save OpenVMS data and guarantee being able to restore it in the future (assuming access to OpenVMS ... ) is as a backup saveset. So if your tapes are OpenVMS software distributions then copy the savesets from each tape into a directory per tape (with an appropriate directory name and maybe a README.TXT describing the tape, part number etc.). If the data is stuff you have created yourself then I would get it into BACKUP format. That way all the attributes are sure to be preserved. If it is a bootable tape then you can certainly copy off the savesets but you will lose the ability to boot the recreated tape. So here you need a tape imaging program. Now you have a set of raw data to play with. I would now use LDDRIVER to create a 650(ish)MB LD disk and then copy the data onto that. Dismount the disk, FTP the container file (in binary mode) to somewhere with a CD writer and burn to CD in "image" format. I've done this with Nero before now, but I don't remember the exact details. The way you know you have it right is to take the CD and mount it on any OpenVMS box. Then run ANALYZE/DISK against it and also BACKUP/COMPARE against the original. The final result is an ISO9660 CD that VMS will be able to mount natively (with all protection attributes etc. preserved). Burn everything twice: CDs are cheap and your time probably is not). If I were doing this now I'd probably burn the images (as files) to DVDs ... less to store ... and only then burn individual CDs for the things I really wanted to access under VMS right now. Once you get into the swing of things, you'll find that the most time consuming part is amassing the data ready to write. In which case you might wish to unpack the BACKUP savesets, ZIP up the various trees and FTP the zip files over to be burnt as ordinary ISO9660 files. This is obviously only really applicable where the files make sense off-VMS. Obviously the savesets that make up say OpenVMS V7.1 VAX are not going to be of much use anywhere other than on an OpenVMS box. If you have data that makes sense both under VMS and elsewhere, you can burn a hybrid ISO9660/ODS-2 CD where the data is stored once but available under both "personalities". This takes a little more effort and an Alpha. It really only makes sense for common-format binaries (e.g. PDF) and text (e.g. HTML). I did this a few years ago for some manuals and such that I wanted to access both on an Alpha and a PC. As you'll now have a bunch of disk images lying around on a PC, you could fire up SIMH VAX (with VMS) and mount them to check them out there too. This way you can get at your data even after you've forgotten where your uVAX 3100 has been stored. Antonio