11 Jan
2007
11 Jan
'07
1:33 a.m.
Al Kossow wrote:
Yes, that's been my experience too, although I've mainly dealt with 5.25"
floppies and seen the oxide problems there. I'm just not sure the poor
conditions are a root cause though, or if it's one of those "disaster waiting
to happen" scenarios - i.e. better storage will buy more time, but the
physical deterioration is going to happen sooner or later anyway.
Oh absolutely - I just meant that floppies are one of those examples of things
that aren't always best left with a museum. For a museum the problem can be
daunting because there will be limited staff and they have to worry about
everything - whereas a private individual interested in a particular class of
media (everything from a specific manufacturer, say) might have both the time
and motivation to attack that media long before the museum would have a chance
to get to it.
Tackling that sort of trusted relationship between museums and individuals is
an interesting one though, and likely further complicated by museum
certification schemes which limit what a museum can and can't do with its assets.
cheers
Jules
what's the
expected
remaining lifetime of a floppy? Time is probably of the essence
Chuck and Fred have more experience, but I'm assuming once they're
in a stable temp/humidity environment they should be ok for another
10 years. The stuff I'm dealing with now is stuff WAY past its shelf
live (20-30 year old tapes). I've read hundreds of floppies over the
past five years or so, and the only problems I've had have been with
70's 8" media that was stored in poor conditions where the oxide
strips off upon head contact, it's nice
that the stuff ends up with a museum where
lots of people can see it
Another minor point is it is probably unlikely that ANYONE
other than archivists would see the physical discs unless
there is something really unique about how they look. The
important thing to preserve is their contents.