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*NOW* I remember why disks were such a pain

daverand

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 25, 2022
Messages
129
So recently, I've been going through my disk collection. It had been stored in a unheated storage unit in a small town in Canada for more than 20 years, and before that was left pretty much to fend for itself through various moves. To my utter surprise, the vast majority of the disks were readable. However...

I had accumulated quite a variety of disks over the years. 3M, Verbatim, Dysan, Wabash, No-name... I think I pretty much have at least one example of all disks available :)
I had 5.25", 8", 3" (yes, really), 3.5"... and that was the first hurdle, getting set to read these disks. Thankfully, great folks like Keir Fraser have released tools (both hardware and software) that make this task a lot easier.

But then the second set of problems arose. Some were 35 track, single sided. Some 40. Some 80. Some 76. Some double sided. Some mixed density. Some hard sector, most soft sector. And the reading of the data was just the first set of problems - figuring out how to copy the files to current media was... challenging. Archiving the disk image itself was pretty easy, but extracting files was harder.

In total, I'm processing about 10 file-boxes full of media - thousands of disks. Some gems are emerging (like the recent beta copy of Microsoft Level III), but most of it has historic interest only to me - things like BIOS code I wrote back in the day, microcode for various things, schematics, application programs...

This is really a sub-plot of larger issues of data accessibility, however. I have literally terabytes of data which I've accumulated over my life. There are pictures, video, audio, scans, databases (I have one of the largest spam collections in the world, going back 25+ years), along with code. It's pretty easy to be a data hoarder, I guess.

But how best to organize this? And how best to know that the data is "still good"? Even though some of the floppies had valid CRCs, the data was in fact corrupt. Did it get corrupted in storage, or was it written corrupted due to a system or memory failure back in the day? No way to really know for sure.

This kind of forum allows me to ask the question to a larger audience - how do you preserve data for the future? How do you make sure it is still accessible and "the same" as when it was created. What systems do you use? What can I do better?
 
Floppies still working after 20 years in unheated storage in Canada is pretty impressive.

This may not be the answer you are looking for...but the truth is as I get older I worry less about stuff like this. My data only has to outlast me. When I'm gone it's no longer my problem.

In the meantime I've got multiple copies on both RAID and unpowered hard drives.
 
I appreciate that - thank you. For much of the data, you are correct (and hard drives are better than flash, at least so far). But the pictures and videos are mostly of my kids, so at least *that* stuff has to outlast them, not just me.

On that note things *at the time* which were commonplace, are quite difficult to obtain now - for example 8" disk drives. So, at least a plan for migration to "more modern" storage might be a good idea. While "The Internet" seems commonplace now, perhaps in 20 years it will not be, so I reject "put it in the cloud" as a good solution.

DC-600 (and DC-300, and similar) tapes are also good examples. I've had little trouble reading my old 9-track tapes, but it's a sticky mess to try to deal with DC-600's. DLT seems like a reasonable choice (some of my DLT tapes are 20+ years now, and read fine). Of course, that depends on a drive being available too...

Anyway, it's a consideration, and appreciate the comments!
 
One option for long-term archival storage would be an M-Disk. The data on them is more-or-less permanent (100 to 1,000 years without data loss). There are BDXL versions that will store up to 100GB of data, readable by any current generation BluRay drive. You would still have the long-term issue of something to read them in the future, but the data itself would be preserved.
 
Thank you - I was unaware of this technology. The media price is "reasonable". I'll add it to the mix. Very much appreciated!
 
The data on them is more-or-less permanent (100 to 1,000 years without data loss).
Which no one can ever prove. The same was once said about CDs and it was wrong.

Long time ago, I was using PD and later DVD-RAM for long-term storage. Never had any data loss and the cartridges all still work, but are no longer in use.

These days, I have all my stuff on a RAID 5 NAS and do a backup weekly on RDX.
 
Personally, all my "important" data is stored in a couple ways:

I keep a local copy of whatever it is on my main machine - Typically on the non-boot drive.
I keep a copy on a flash drive I carry with me.
I keep a copy on my local file server, which is automatically backed up to LTO-2 tape once a week. In my current setup, about 6 months of compressed backups will fit on one tape. Tapes are rotated, I have 4 tapes.
Past that, I will upload them to Google Drive or Mega nz.

There are VERY few documents I do this for. If I'm just storing something long term, it will be stuffed somewhere on the local file server. If it's something REALLY long term, I will use the above mentioned M-DISC or buy another LTO-2 tape just for whatever it happens to be. This is typically the case with my website, source files for videos I've already recorded, edited, and uploaded, or completed / abandoned projects of mine.

You're the guy with the TEC hard drive! I'd be very curious to know what lurks in the depths of some of that data you're digging up. Archaeology is fun!
 
You're the guy with the TEC hard drive! I'd be very curious to know what lurks in the depths of some of that data you're digging up. Archaeology is fun!
Thank you for the details - I am interested in how others are doing things because I don't think that there is "One True Way". Keeping stuff around for my kids is important too, which may be atypical....

I've been digging up quite a bit. Old CP/M systems, lots of Digital Research software trivia, some previously unknown Microsoft Basic, NS32K code and documents for days, some of the microcode I worked on for the NS32CG16 (that never made it into final silicon)... seems never-ending. I have not found the code for the TEC drive yet, but still have lots to go through...
 
Floppies still working after 20 years in unheated storage in Canada is pretty impressive.

This may not be the answer you are looking for...but the truth is as I get older I worry less about stuff like this. My data only has to outlast me. When I'm gone it's no longer my problem.

In the meantime I've got multiple copies on both RAID and unpowered hard drives.

This is... depressing...

Personally, I want my important data to last far into the future, long after I'm gone; indefinitely. Of course, I have no real control over how my data is handled (or mishandled/lost) by people in the future, but I do what I can.
 
Invest in some M-disc hardware and media, write them, and then bury the lot in some remote location. Eventually, the cockroaches who take over the world from the humans will find them and figure out a way to read them.
"Our plesance here is all vain glory,
This fals world is but transitory"

--William Dunbar, 1465-1520
 
I've still all my original DRDos 6.0, Geoworks Ensemble 1.2 Pro, MS Windows 3.1 and plenty more software diskettes they all still work flawlessly in a good floppy disk drive.....It's all how you hold your tonge old boy.
 
The other side of the coin is that I have a lot of Digital Research and Microsoft media which is no longer readable, too. They were not stored well - that's for certain - but it really did depend on the actual media more than the storage conditions, at least in my experience. Same for a lot of my TRS-80 factory media too. The 8" disks are pretty much toast for about half - and the other half read fine. Storing data long term on diskettes isn't viable for lots of reasons (not the least of which is that there ain't no new drives any more). Migrating to "current" media seems like the best choice, but I'm still looking. My 20 year old DLT media seems good, at least so far, and I'm taking efforts to store it better.

Things get dicey after 40+ years, at least in my experience.

I still remember the 3M sales weasel that came back a week after selling us a load of 8" disks, only to find that we had trashed many of them due to read errors. Looking at the disks, you could see the oxide coming off in rings around the disks. His comment: "What? Do you guys spend all your time running the disks in the drives? Leave them in the boxes! They will last longer!"
 
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