🚀 go-pugleaf

krw@ibm.net (Keith R. Williams) writes:

>    [concerning floppies]  It's just not a reasonable media for
>storage anymore, if it ever was.  BTW, I tried to read a few six 
>month old TR1 tapes a few nights ago too.  They're no better than
>floppys.

I've mentioned the 5.25" floppies that were still good after 8 years
storage here in a nominally air-conditioned building (it only fails
twice a year -- at the beginning of summer and at the beginning of
winter :).

Referring now to magtapes [you're not *that* Keith Williams are you? ;-)]
it seems that at least the mainframe versions are pretty reliable,
provided their storage is good.  The files I copied from the JCU PDP-10
system in late 1989 came off two tapes: one written at UQ on their
PDP-10 in Dec '73 and the other written at JCU in 1975, I think it was.
The tapes had been simply stored at JCU for the intervening 14-16 years.
I recall that there had been some concern that they may have "printed
through" from being unused for so long.  But the annual(?) maintenance
["cleaning" -- whatever that involved] was apparently sufficient to
avoid the problem.  All the files were recovered without loss (or even
minor problems) and transferred to the floppies.

I'm wondering how long those CD-Rs will last under "normal" storage.
The hype suggests they will have good longevity, but there seem to be
some ifs and buts attached to that -- keep them out of the light,
handle them *very gently*, etc., etc.

Cheers,  Ian S.


-- 

Ian Staples                        MS-Mail: staplesi@dpi.qld.gov.au
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