Disk archival techniques

And herein lies the core of the electronic/data part of the problem. Everything is perfectly orthogonal, except for the exceptions. And there are so many exceptions as to rule the roost. The implication in this thread is there is some single computer-based solution to solving the world's data loss problem. It's silly on it's face. Look how hard it is with the black square things with the rotating magnetic mylar inside, even of just one size. I think that the idea of always saving all data is naive. Even within narrow bounds, say electronicizing printed manuals, there are all sorts of compromises and data losses (resolution, color, texture, ad nauseum) but the usage is often nerdly, not cultural, eg. I wanna know what IC17 is and will interpolate between the moire pattern artifacts to find out. The human eyeball/brain is fixing the errors. I predict that there will be no single solution to the current crop of problems, which will expand with time. Funny, I was making this argument in an automobile list, where there's a similar implied goal of a magic fuel, motor, etc that will "solve transportation problems". I think it's clear that transportation is a cultural system, involving cars, trains, public trans, urban planning, walkable neighborhoods, etc. One size does not fit all. The problem has to be handled case by case. While certainly lots of sharing is great, it might be that (made up examples) Cromemco CDOS archiving is different from Cromemco CP/M and other CP/Ms though there is overlap, etc and it's all certainly different than archiving 1/2" tape, or paper tapes, or disk packs, or EPROMs. A unified system seems like a 1890 solution. Give a small boy a hammer, and everything looks like a nail.