Software Preservation (was: SIMTEL...)

From: Doc <doc_at_mdrconsult.com>
Date: Thu Apr 4 22:50:05 2002

On 4 Apr 2002, R. D. Davis wrote:

> I'm becoming convinced that the safest way to preserve software is to
> keep it on a live filesystem that's frequently backed up, using at
> least one type of relatively modern storage media - or at least on
> mylar tape, although that's impractical for large amounts of data (and
> impractical for me because I haven't acquired a tape punch/reader
> yet). Any thoughts on this?

  I don't know about mylar, but anything that's important to me is on at
least 2 physical drives - one in the box, subject to my weekly backups,
and one on a shelf, and on CD as well as backup tapes. More because I
_can_ than because I think it's imperative.
  MDR does disaster recovery, specialising in Tivoli's TSM, so I get a
very frequent dose of horror story. It's appalling to me how many
multi-billion-dollar businesses budget their data-protection on the
order of a few thousand a year. It becomes appalling to them when they
find out they don't _have_ any data protection.

        Doc
Received on Thu Apr 04 2002 - 22:50:05 BST