Re: [ARSCLIST] Article about digital archiving in the NY Times

["Richard L. Hess" <arclists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:43 AM 2008-04-09, Bob Olhsson wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From Marcos Sueiro Bal: "..."Economic sustainability is the new mantra of
> those who would preserve
> digital data"..."
>
> This, after all, IS the Achilles' heel of digital media. It totally depends
> on technology that is only affordable when mass produced and that
> historically has generally become obsolete within a few short years. We
> can't play the first decade of digital recordings.

Hi, Bob,

That is very true and at issue there was that the data was stored in 
a proprietary format, not a generic format. What we are doing now is 
moving media storage into generic storage. While I may have trouble 
reading some 360 kB floppies from my original IBM-PCXT, I do not 
worry, because long ago, I went through a floppy blitz and burned 
them onto a CD. I did not have the 1800 or so floppies that would fit 
on one CD.

Later, when I moved into mass disk storage which I've discussed at 
length here as a possible model for other users (currently 3 TB of 
storage with multiple copies of each (total disc capacity is about 7 
TB)), I simply copied that one CD into a folder on the drives in an 
overall "archives" folder.

While I may have difficulty accessing some of the early word 
processor and spreadsheet files because of software obsolescence, 
none of the TXT or JPG files from that era are any harder to open 
than they were at that time -- in fact, they are much easier to open 
as we're not waiting for floppy disks to click-click-whirr-chugg.

I only see it easier moving forward. The contents of my disparate 
storage appliances at multiple locations will all nicely fit into one 
storage appliance a generation or two down the road and when it comes 
time for the children to set up their own homes, a RAID array or 
similar device will carry all the digital family memorabilia with 
them I suspect 1 TB or at the most 2 TB will be all we'll need for 
the slide collections, the scrap books, etc. While I'm not disposing 
of my originals, it's nice for the kids to have their own, 
high-quality copies--the whole thing sitting in less than one foot on 
one shelf with an ethernet port and a power cord (UPS extra).

I think we needed the dedicated formats (like Soundstream, Mitsubishi 
X8x, and Sony DASH) to kick-start the digital industry, but I think 
that now that we've moved into commodity storage, that will be 
something that, in some form, will be available for the foreseeable future.

What used to cost a fortune to store is now peanuts.

Cheers,

Richard


Richard L. Hess                   email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Aurora, Ontario, Canada       (905) 713 6733     1-877-TAPE-FIX
Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.