Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/06/21
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I'm afraid I haven't been as lucky as you, Brian. I still have alot of information on 5.25" floppies, which is lost to me for all practical purposes. I could go out and find a drive and copy things over, but what a hassle! I also have many backup tapes created with Everex tape drives. Today, they are totally unreadable without the original tape drive software. Finally, I have many files that I created with SMART and ENABLE, two programs that I used for general office productivity back in the 80s. Again, totally unreadable unless I go and hunt down an old compatible version of those software packages, and export my documents into some form that a contemporary software program could import. But it's just too much trouble. I've resigned myself to letting go of the information because I can't devote enough time to becoming a digital archivist. On the other hand, I have all my college papers in a file, still readable by any human eye. - -Jim - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brian Reid" <reid@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us> To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us> Sent: Friday, June 20, 2003 7:52 AM Subject: Re: [Leica] Film is Archival > Digital can be archival. It's just not automatic yet. > I have digital archives that date back to 1967, which is when I first started keeping digital information that mattered to me. It is now 36 years later, and I still have all of it. Today my digital archives are about 100GB; I think that they didn't exceed 10MB until 1970. > > The "secret" is very simple. Make a copy onto two different media every 5 years. At least one of those media will still be around in 5 more years, and you can repeat the process. > > Currently my digital archives live in 3 forms: > IDE hard drives that are turned off and sealed > DVD ROMs (33 ROMs hold everything) > DDS3 DAT tapes (10 tapes hold everything) > > I also keep everything online on regular servers. > > At some point in the future some new storage technology will come along, and I will copy my archives onto that. I suspect that if I die before a truly archival technology comes along, my children will have no trouble reading any of the archival media and continuing this tradition of copying should that be what they want. > > I also have boxes and boxes of B&W photographic prints processed to be archival. Those will outlast the cockroaches. > > -- > To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html