19 Mar
2007
19 Mar
'07
1:07 p.m.
On 19 Mar 2007 at 13:18, Jules Richardson wrote:
Indeed - and it's easy to say "record as much
as possible". Problem then is
that it discourages archive owners from publishing content simply because it's
time-consuming to enter the metadata for the items that they're making
available. Getting the balance right is probably going to be tricky.
I thought I'd share a little tidbit here. On floppy conversion jobs,
it's rare for us to use a PC diskette controller. I've long found
that using a catweasel or similar flux-transition capture tool
results in a much higher data recovery rate--and it's rare that I
have to read a diskette more than once in order to determine the
format or recording method. This can be an issue with very old
diskettes, which can degrade with each read.
When we return converted data a customer, we'll also generally
include the flux state map as documentation. The needed space on a
CD or DVD usually comes nearly "free" and there's a permanent record.
I don't know if FTP space will ever be cheap enough that recording
flux maps on them for public access will ever be economical, but it's
certainly something to think about if preserving "images" and not
just converted data becomes important.
FWIW,
Chuck