[PLUG] long-term data storage

Russell Senior seniorr at aracnet.com
Fri Mar 21 16:35:02 UTC 2003


>>>>> "Russell" == Russell Senior <seniorr at aracnet.com> writes:

>>>>> "Carla" == Carla Schroder <pluglist at bratgrrl.com> writes:
Carla> Is there any medium besides paper that you trust for long-term
Carla> data storage?  Seems like looking beyond five years gets
Carla> iffy. What about 10-30 years? Which still isn't that long,
Carla> compared to books and magazines.

Russell> I recently went back to 10-14 year-old floppies (720k
Russell> 3.5-inchers) and could read all but 3 out of about 200 (I am
Russell> not sure the failure rate was any better at the time!).  I
Russell> could read all of my 5.25-inch 360k floppies from the
Russell> mid-1980's, nearly 20 years old.

Just another update on this.  We are condensing heavily in preparation
for an office move.  One of the things on the chopping block is our
old 5.25-inch floppy drives, and so I am going through our archive of
old floppies.  I have yet to find a 15 year old 5.25 disk I can't
read.  I did have some trouble with the 3.5-inchers, but 98% of them
were fine and usually only lost 8 sectors off of those.  So, if you
want robust long-term data storage, go with 5.25 inch floppies! ;-)

-- 
Russell Senior         ``I've seen every kind of critter God ever made,
seniorr at aracnet.com      and I ain't never seen a meaner, lower, more
                         stinkin' yellow hypocrite than you!'' 
                                        -- Burl Ives as Rufus Hennessy




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