Dear all,
thought I should follow up Vince's figures. He's right to warn about the
hype of the manufacturers. It's probably also good to keep calm, and not
believe all the scare stories that you will undoubtedly here. That's
why it was
good to have the figures from Vince's own experience. In one rescue
case we undertook recently, we found that the disks were actually quite
stable - just normal 3.25 inch floppy disks. There was something like 5
percent corruption, which was less than one might expect. (These
figures are from memory) That could be luck - but it corresponds more
or less with what Vince reported
There is much more to data storage than media though.
Have a look at
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/project/faq.html#protect
for data you are working with at the moment
... and
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/project/faq.html#steps
for data you want to maintain over the long term.
In our experience, many sins can be forgiven in the long term, and
problems worked round, where time and money allow. Media isn't always
the most pressing issue in data storage. The one thing that absolutely
cannot be worked round is documentation. If you don't know what a file
is or what it contains, then you will have real problems using or
maintaining it, even if it is in perfect shape. See
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/project/goodguides/excavation/sect41.html
for more on documentation.
All best wishes,
William
--
William Kilbride
User Services Manager
Archaeology Data Service
Dept of Archaeology t 0044 (0)1904 433954
University of York f 0044 (0)1904 433939
England YO1 7EP, UK m 0044 (0)7967 128632
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk e [log in to unmask]
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