How about storing our archival digital disks in a hermetically sealed container, flushed with nitrogen or carbon dioxide (easy to obtain, even from a flake of dry ice, dropped into the storage container just before sealing it)? That way, there should be little or no oxyge, and little or no oxidation of the burned pits, and therefore no degradation of the data.
Just an idea . . . ****************** On Jan 5, 2009, at 1:31 PM, Dan wrote: At 10:13 AM -0800 1/5/2009, aussieshepsrock wrote: > I wanted to 'expand' on how I'm handling this family photo archive > project. :-) [snip - lots of details] Sounds like a good, well thought out plan to me. > Query! - As someone who has definitely experienced the loss of data in > hd failure, optical disc failure/damage, floppy/zip failure, and video > tape decay. I wonder how something as fragile as 'Tapes' can be > advocated over high grade opticals for my application. Magnetic media is actually less fragile than burned media. heh. I've got tapes and floppies that were written in the 80s, that still read just fine. Tapes/etc store data as magnetic patterns that don't degrade / fade much. Burned media stores data as "pits" in the substraight, under the outer plastic coating. Over time, oxygen leeches through the plastic, and forms rust (oxide), which fill the "pits", creating read errors. Tapes/etc can be "cleaned", then read with stronger-field heads. Burned media - only the outer plastic can be cleaned - the pits are permanently filled in, so the data is gone. - Dan. -- - Psychoceramic Emeritus; South Jersey, USA, Earth --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
