[pmmail-list] Backup Strategy was Digest (01/20/2003 09:01) (#2003-430)

[L.Willms]

On Tue, 21 Jan 2003 12:35:31 +0000 (GMT), Simon Bowring wrote:

> For reliable long-term backup, you have to keep your data "moving" 
> e.g *keep* copying it to new media :-(  Not least because these 
> days, the  media and associated reader technology can become 
> "obsolete" before your bloody data does - that's what they call 
> progress, I guess:-(

    Bit decay and software rot do their part... 

    But seriously, I agree with you. When it is important data which one 
wants to keep, and not only as a heap of things, but as accessible 
information, one has to take care that the information is actually 
accessible with my current means. Before you throw away that old 
computer, make sure that its replacement can read all the old media, or 
copy them to new ones. 

   I still remember the query of someone only a few years ago who had a 
number of tapes in 7-track-format (which was current on Sperry Univac 
mainframes long time ago) and couldn't find anybody to convert them for 
him. The tapes and their magnetic structures might well have been 
perfect, but 7-track-tapes were no longer supported by the current 
operating systems and no installation had any 7-track tapes any more. 
This struck me since I remembered quite well the announcement that this 
and that hardware would no longer be suppoted after a certain date, and 
7-track tapes were among them. 

  As you said: keep your data "moving" 

Yours, 
Lüko Willms
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