Radoslaw, I think that all the data that P&H thought they would need, they converted and FTP'd to the datacenter in Pennsylvania. The tapes that they saved were data that they might need at some time. So far, I don't know if they have needed to go back and use any of the data or not.
Personally, I wanted to do full volume dumps on all packs. Then, if 3 years from now, they desperately needed something, they could rent a hot site and load enough stuff to pull off anything they needed. Very expensive, but sometimes that is required. They chose to not keep anything from system pack backups, so there would be no way to reload the system and extract any data from it. Eric Bielefeld > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of R.S. > Sent: Sunday, May 06, 2007 1:27 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Mainframe Data Center Permanant Shutdown Procedure Needed > > Eric Bielefeld wrote: > > One area that we had a lot of debate on at P&H Mining was how to access > > tapes that were saved. They saved a lot of 3490 carts, but had no way > of > > reading them. They thought of buying a 3490 drive and software to > convert > > the data to ASCII, but as far as I know, they didn't buy anything. I > think that > > would have cost about $10K. > [...] > That's the issue I don't understand/accept. Someone should know *what > data* should be kept for what time and then ask what media the data > occupy. After that analysis, all needed, or "possibly needed" data can > be read to another media, like DVD, the rest can be safely erased or > destroyed with the media. Sometimes legal requirements makes the > migration too hard (i.e. custmer of a bank can request his account's > history), so it's easier to simply keep the old system just for > historical data retrieval until the period set by the law expires. > There are many other ways, but keeping tapes just to keep them doesn't > sound reasonable. > My $0.02 > > -- > Radoslaw Skorupka > Lodz, Poland > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
