21 Oct
2007
21 Oct
'07
3:21 a.m.
On Sat, 2007-10-20 at 19:52 -0700, Al Kossow wrote:
Just on that note, there's a problem I've been struggling with for a
while. I'm trying to capture disk images for an Ensoniq Mirage sampler,
which uses a slightly odd format - five sectors of 1024 bytes followed
by one sector of 512 bytes.
I can read the disks with piece of software intended for a similar piece
of equipment, I ought to be able to write them but haven't tested this,
but I can't format them.
Now at the moment this isn't a huge problem, because I've got working
formatter disks for the Mirage - you boot up the appropriate disk, stick
a blank in, and it will format it. However, to write to the disk you
need to have a format on it in the first place, so you can't write a
formatter disk without having a formatted disk... Chicken and egg.
Gordon
Yep, went
through that at the museum because some people were advocating
putting media on the archive shelves - but it's not an idea I'm a fan off; the
stuff's just too prone to damage and decay.
Unless you recover the data, what you have is a physical artifact of a magnetic
storage medium. There is absolutely no way to say what, in fact, is even on it
until you read it. Bits aren't preserved if they exist on only one physical medium,
which you may not be able to recover in the future.