29 Nov
2009
29 Nov
'09
3:16 p.m.
On 29 Nov 2009 at 14:46, Jim Leonard wrote:
Murray McCullough wrote:
They're usually free on the local freecycle and $5 on craigslist here
(that's the 750MB model too). This is pretty much a Mac town, so
there's a lot of them out there.
I listened to an interesting talk by Robert Danter of Harvard last
night. Harvard is in process of digitizing their entire collection
and much of his talk was given over to the influence of Google (he
thinks it's good, but that they need to be watched). One question
Let's hope these
technologies last longer than my Zip-drive and disks that can't be
read because the drive died and I can't get it fixed or at the very
least at a decent price. So Sad!
zip drives are $10 on ebay, have you tried a replacement drive? from the floor asked about preservation of digital
data. He wasn't
too concerned about the data itself, but was concerned that
information could become "orphaned" (i.e. dis-indexed) and so be
logically gone. I can see his point. As far as recovery goes, he
pointed out that the bulk of the US 1960 census data was eventually
recovered even though it was initially thought to be lost.
I use DVD-R much less than CD-R and use the Mitsui/MAM-A "gold" media
for archival discs, so I should be fine. My old QIC tapes seem to
read just fine after 20 years as do my 30+ year old 8" floppies.
I've never used Zip/Jaz/Sparq etc. for archival storage.
Wasn't there a videodisc recording method that used a high-powered
laser to burn pits into blank media? That would seem to be a good
candidate for archival storage.
--Chuck