From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Jul 14 16:43:26 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from freeside.fc.net (freeside.fc.net [207.170.70.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9641414D9E for ; Wed, 14 Jul 1999 16:43:24 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jdunham@freeside.fc.net) Received: (from jdunham@localhost) by freeside.fc.net (8.9.3/8.8.8) id SAA37564; Wed, 14 Jul 1999 18:40:10 -0500 (CDT) From: Jerry Dunham Message-Id: <199907142340.SAA37564@freeside.fc.net> Subject: Further down the rathole (was: Re: Recommended tapes from HP?) In-Reply-To: <199907141328.IAA25886@hostigos.otherwhen.com> from Mike Avery at "Jul 14, 1999 08:24:41 am" To: mavery@mail.otherwhen.com Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 18:40:10 -0500 (CDT) Cc: grog@lemis.com (Greg Lehey), questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Mike Avery babbled: > From: "Mike Avery" > To: Greg Lehey , questions@FreeBSD.ORG > Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 08:24:41 -0500 > As a side note, a number of years back Scientific American ran an > article on the life expectancy of backups. Their conclusion was that > most backups were rendered useless by the march of technology > sooner than the media showed problems. How much do you have on > 8" floppy disks? How much of it can you restore? How about those > 5" CPM diskettes? Can you recover that really cool code you wrote > years back? Or even the tax information you created with a Lotus 1- > 2-3 tax spreadsheet you found on a BBS? If you DO read the data, > is it still useable in current spreadsheets? How about diskettes > from your Lanier word processor? (They used to be popular...) Not only do I have 8-inch disks (I was the mechanical engineer for the Datapoint and Rat Shack machines that used 'em), but I have backups on audio tape for my old Sinclairs and Atari backups on 21 MB Flopticals. :-( Anyone know how to usefully read any of this stuff? (The tapes and floppies, not the Flopticals. The Floptical drive is SCSI and therefore accessible.) > If you can live with re-furbished drives, and older DLT drives are > OK, you can also check out > http://www.corpsys.com/store/products.asp?dept=Tape%20Drives > > They have an archive 4mm DAT (DDS2) changer for $495 US, and > older DLT drives in 10/20 gig or 15/30 gig flavors for $695 US > each. I've had good luck with the vendor in the past, and they offer > an extended (6 year) warranty on refurbished merchandise. Good to know. Thanks. -- Jerry Dunham FreeBSD Atarian ordinaire jdunham@fc.net (512)335-0674 (H) jdunham@avalanche.us.dell.com (512)728-4026 (O) E Pluribus Unix To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message