Robert Rolf writes:

> So how many of you have data on media you can no longer read?

I did some housecleaning a year ago and found an old Archive 60 MB
tape backup system I used to use with my old PC/AT (10 Mhz 286) I knew
I'd never need it again and decided to scrap it for parts.  Turns out
that the rubber capstan had turned to a sticky, gummy goo and the
rubber belts were loose and brittle.

Two months ago I needed to pull some data from some DATs I recorded in
1998.  I could only read one segment of one tape.

> What do you think will happen to all your digital photos
> in 20 years when CDROM drives are obsolete?

I've already begun to have problems with CD media that I recorded just
a few years ago.  I spent a rainy weekend reading it in and duping it
off to DVD.  I suppose I'll have to repeat the process again in a few
years when the next technology comes out.

> I find it ironic that historians decades from now will be
> able to look at 1950's Technicolor movies in near perfect
> condition, but will have NOTHING from the later 2000's
> because the magnetic or optical media will be unreadable.

This isn't entirely true.  There are entire libraries of celluloid
that are turning to dust.  There is actually a mad rush to preserve as
many old films as possible.  Even of the films where the base stock
has remained stable, the colors have become terribly washed with
time.

Oddly enough, I can still read most of my Apple ][ floppies despite
the fact that they sat in an outside storage shed for several years.
One of my SX projects is to interface an Apple disk drive with the PCs
parallel port so I can pull data off at disk speeds (approx 17 seconds
per disk) as opposed to serial port speeds (several minutes or more)

In general terms, though, digital archival is often an all or nothing
deal.  Quality of analog may degrade, but in most cases you'll be able
to recover *something*

-p.
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