Preserving ancient media

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Wed May 21 17:57:01 2003

> Thanks for that.
>
> I tried simply zipping up a .WAV file created by the program I mentioned and
> it compressed from 544kb down to 3.4kb. The original data file was 409
> bytes, so although the result is 8 times bigger than the data file, storage
> is not too much of a problem.

Do just check that you can expand this back to a WAV file (shouldn't be a
proble, zip is not a lossy compression method) and that you can replay
the WAV file into the computer concerned. No point in archiving data if
it can't be used...

>
> At this compression ratio (or rather expansion I suppose), a CD could store
> 80Mb of original computer data - more than was probably ever written for
> some of those computers!.

Indeed...

-tony
Received on Wed May 21 2003 - 17:57:01 BST