On Tue, Mar 23, 2004 at 04:34:28PM -0500, John-Robert La Porta wrote: > I'm sure after all their hard work back then they would have had them > backed up on tape, or even possible stored on CDs of the time for > archiving.
While they would have maintained an archive, it is not necessarily intact. Even in a temperature and humidity controlled environment, data will be lost. There was a well known issue in the mid to late 1980s where tapes would fail due to the binding between the tape and recording surface failing. Maybe the equipment has failed or replaced and space is required for other purposes. It costs thousands of dollars to transfer the old backups to new media (I ought to know, I was hired to do this work on a relatively small archive). Then there is the matter of finding data: backups may not be properly indexed so you may have to manually search for a particular type of backup, then you have to find the specific item you are looking for. There are considerable problems with backing up data. They exist today, and they most certainly existed ten or fifteen years ago. It is quite possible that Apple does not have functional or accessible copies of a lot of their software. Byron. -- Compact Macs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/>. Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Compact Macs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/compact.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/compact.macs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
