On Tuesday, September 2, 2003, at 01:38 pm, Bob Smith wrote:
No matter what you use its pretty much a given that over some period of time you're going to want to move from that media to whatever the latest most efficient media is. I've moved much of the data I have on old DAT tapes going back to '93 to CD. I've now moved some of my larger CD archives to DVD for the convenience of having a larger pile of related images on one disk. Of course the original tapes and CDs are kept as well so there's even more redundancy available. By the way, I've yet to encounter any problem pulling data off of even some my oldest DAT tapes...and this is supposedly one of the most fragile types of archive.
Bob Smith
Dear Bob
I've had DAT tapes, Syquests and about three types of Opticals. All of them failed to some degree when the bureau machines packed up. CDs are fairly ubiquitous and I feel confident that drives will be available for a long while yet. I drive past a place occasionally that specialises in old redundant systems and getting data off them called "Grey Matter". I have no worries on CDs going the way of Syquests.
My solution now is to use Hard Drives and CDs. Storing on Hard Drives means I rarely have to access old CD disks. Its quite easy to pick up an Hard Drive and take it to another computer someplace else.
I console myself over the costs of archiving that it is cheaper than the insurance I used to pay. Since having two copies of digital files I stopped paying the premiums on the film.
Yours
Bob
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