lfb107_at_psu.edu (Les Berry) wrote:
>I know I saw a post on this a while back but I don't recall
>any of the suggestions for preserving old floppies.
I've archived a number of my Terak 8-inch floppies by sending a disk
image out the serial port, and capturing on a PC. I also wrote utilities
to extract the files and get directories from these disk images
containing UCSD P-System and RT-11 file systems. See my web page for
more info.
It would be great if there were a highly portable program that could
be adapted easily to any system that would somehow (serial, Ethernet,
file system, etc.) make a copy of all the blocks on a device. Of course,
some operating systems already have such utilities that can be called
into service for this task, but I think we need something that goes
a bit deeper.
For example, old media tends to have errors. This block-transfer program
(and perhaps its resulting disk image) need to be smart enough to mark
some blocks as "known bad" to let external programs work around the
problem. Various built-in block-copy programs might react to this
error in different ways, none of them pleasant to the data restoration
task, of course.
Most emulators can use a pristine disk image. Some emulators for archaic
computers have developed their own formats for storing floppy, hard disk
and tape images.
Tim Shoppa <shoppa_at_alph02.triumf.ca> wrote:
>I don't understand the difficulties here. You make a sector-by-sector
>image of the 8-inch floppy and store it on whatever medium you regard
>as being more archival. This is done quite easily on every system
>I know with an 8-inch floppy drive; if you're having difficulties, let
>us know your hardware and OS and a solution will be found.
It would be great if there were more utilities that could operate on
these floppy/hard/paper/cassette/N-track images: reading and writing
files to them, getting directories of them, etc.
jpero_at_cgo.wave.ca wrote:
>For any paper based media, clone data to acid-free paper, mylar
>or tyvek. Tyvek is nearly very HARD to tear and very strong.
Paper-based media? You mean manuals, or Cauzin soft-strips? :-)
Laser-printer and even some copier toners drive me bananas; a
little heat or pressure or out-gassing plastic nearby and they
fuse pages together or flake toner particles.
>Also stray magnetic field hurts the magnetic based stuff.
I may be completely off-base about this, but I've always regarded this
as an urban legend, too. Go ahead, try to damage the bits on a floppy
with a refrigerator magnet. It's not the same as a bulk eraser.
- John
Jefferson Computer Museum <
http://www.threedee.com/jcm>
Received on Thu Mar 12 1998 - 09:09:03 GMT