Defining Disk Image Dump Standard

From: Richard Erlacher <richard_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Tue May 30 19:26:23 2000

Unfortunately, too few people have had floppy "archives" for over 20 years
and seen what they have left.

Dick

----- Original Message -----
From: Rich Lafferty <rich_at_alcor.concordia.ca>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2000 5:57 PM
Subject: Re: Defining Disk Image Dump Standard


> On Tue, May 30, 2000 at 05:19:45PM -0600, Richard Erlacher
(richard_at_idcomm.com) wrote:
> > You don't get it, do you?
> >
> > I'm saying it's probably a bad idea to use floppy media. This is
because
> > it's mechanical, (2) because it's organic, and (3) because it is soon to
> > become obsolete. Aside from problems of data format incompatibility,
you
> > have to deal with the mechanism to be able to read/write the archive's
> > constituent elements.
>
> [snip]
>
> > If you're serious about creating an archive. It needs to be permanent,
so
> > it's essentially requisite that the media be write-once.
>
> I haven't been following this thread, but I happened to notice this
> post. I happened to be speaking to the chief archivist here at the
> University today about electronic archiving, and the one thing that
> came across in the conversation is that the bottom line regarding
> digital archives is that archiving has become a continuous process.
> >From her perspective, it was simply that one could no longer store
> away paper and expect it to last hundreds of years; relevant to this
> discussion is that the new approach to archiving revolves around not
> only choosing media that will both last and not-be-obsolete for N
> years, but also arranging the process such that in N minus epsilon
> years, the media choice is re-evaluated and the archives rewritten in
> the new media, and repeat.
>
> Permanent digital archives, in other words, are the holy grail of the
> archivist's realm. :-)
>
> Of course, IANAArchivist.
>
> -Rich
>
>
> --
> ------------------------------ Rich Lafferty ---------------------------
> Sysadmin/Programmer, Instructional and Information Technology Services
> Concordia University, Montreal, QC (514) 848-7625
> ------------------------- rich_at_alcor.concordia.ca ----------------------
>
Received on Tue May 30 2000 - 19:26:23 BST

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