On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 04:53:19PM -0700, Eric T. wrote: > Since I build my own computers, and I need to conserve money, I have a > floppy dick drive
Oh, dear. Perhaps a little blue pill would help? Or maybe just a firmware upgrade? :) > and PATA (old parallel ATA) hard drives. If archivists > WANT to keep data on older systems they can. They just need to keep the old > hardware running. I'm afraid that force of will has not proven to be a decisive factor in data retention. If you have proof to the contrary, there are lots of people who would love to see it. > Or they can build a 'bridge' system that has both the older and a newer > hardware combination and simply copy the data,,,again and again... This makes for a nice scenario in an ideal world - and is, perhaps, even possible (to some degree) on a personal computer. Have you ever considered the problems that are inevitable in doing that with hundreds of gigabytes of data? Perhaps terabytes? How, exactly, would you propose examining all of it, and keeping track of all the relevant data formats? How would you know which format applies to which file? How would you know which filesystem structure needs to be used in order to have the data available at all? How would you store that metadata, and how would you generate it? What sort of a backup scheme would you suggest? On what schedule? How about keeping the data available - journaling filesystems? RAID? Striping? SANs? Distributed databases? What are the pros and cons of using those approaches? What's the cost? What would it cost to hire and retain the necessary experts? What are the security implications of doing so?... ...and those are just the very basics of data storage, availability, and security. I've been in the computer business for over 30 years - I teach advancement classes for professionals these days - and I don't have any pat answers for the above questions. Frankly, they're too complex for pat answers to be possible, and it would be naive to think otherwise. > If anybody LOOSES data due to changes in media it is their own fault. By that reasoning, the next time you get sick, you'll have no one to blame but yourself. That's both false and damaging, in that it closes off any possibility of solution. -- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET * _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
