Preserving ancient media (was Re: VCFe Munich report)

From: Zane H. Healy <healyzh_at_aracnet.com>
Date: Mon May 12 21:05:00 2003

> > True, but I doubt that Hans or any of the rest of us are planning on
> > trashing the originals after they've been copied.
>
> Maybe not on this list, but I have seen it happen far too often
> elsewhere. People think the latest/greatest storage media must be more
> reliable that something that's rather more ancient...

For some of the stuff I'm copying to more modern media, I have to keep the
originals, even if it becomes unreadable, in order to be legal.

In some cases I've had to archive the original material, and then reuse the
original Media (RL02's come to mind).

> > I think the thing to remember is, just because you've transferred
> > something from original media to "modern" (for the moment) media, you
> > aren't off the hook forever. Those same copies will have to be
> > copied to "modern" media at some point in the future. Depending on
>
> I would never want to rely on this happening, simply because it won't
> always happen. People forget, or they assume tbat nobody will ever what
> 'that old file'. And then it's lost for ever.

I'm trying the following with my archive of DEC stuff.

1. I have the archive on my fileserver (I prefer keeping copies on two
different spinning hard drives).
2. I have two backup copies, one I keep, and one my parents keep.
3. I update #2 when additions are made to #1, keeping the previous backups.

                        Zane
Received on Mon May 12 2003 - 21:05:00 BST