Re: OT: backup panic?

On a sunny day (Fri, 13 Sep 2024 10:25:26 +0100) it happened Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote in <vc10e7$prpi$1@dont-email.me>:

On 13/09/2024 04:47, Jan Panteltje wrote:

Music industry’s 1990s hard drives, like all HDDs, are dying:
 
  https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/music-industrys-1990s-hard-drives-like-all-hdds-are-dying/?comments=1&comments-page=1
The music industry traded tape for hard drives and got a hard-earned lesson.
 
Backup panic?
I have a thousand or more CD's and DVDs in a light proof alu box
I have some 24 year old floppies and a USB floppy reader...

>
You may find that the oxide coat falls off when you try to read them.

Quite possible, lemme see

Just entered SLS Linux flopy disk A1 from 1998
is recognized...

Some other old floppy:
mount /dev/sdc /mnt/sdc1
raspberrypi: ~ # l /mnt/sdc1
total 136
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 12288 Feb 23  2000 lost+found/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 80234 Nov 22  2000 suti-0.8.tgz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 43687 Nov 22  2000 xste-0.3.tgz

OK that one is 24 years old

This is Microsoft Win 98 startup disk
raspberrypi: ~ # mount /dev/sdc /mnt/sdc1
mount: /mnt/sdc1: WARNING: source write-protected, mounted read-only.
raspberrypi: ~ # l /mnt/sdc1
total 1305
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  41302 May  5  1999 OAKCDROM.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root      4 May  5  1999 MSDOS.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  25473 May  5  1999 MSCDEX.EXE*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  30023 May  5  1999 MODE.COM*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  34566 May  5  1999 KEYBOARD.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  20263 May  5  1999 KEYB.COM*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 222390 May  5  1999 IO.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  33415 May  5  1999 HIMEM.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  64425 May  5  1999 FLASHPT.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   8013 May  5  1999 FINDCD.EXE*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  65084 May  5  1999 FDISK.EXE*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  93242 May  5  1999 EXTRACT.EXE*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  58870 May  5  1999 EGA.CPI*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 275904 May  5  1999 EBD.CAB*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  17223 May  5  1999 DISPLAY.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  30742 May  5  1999 COUNTRY.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   1062 May  5  1999 CONFIG.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  96546 May  5  1999 COMMAND.COM*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  30955 May  5  1999 BTDOSM.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  21971 May  5  1999 BTCDROM.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    456 May  5  1999 AUTOEXEC.BAT*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  29620 May  5  1999 ASPICD.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  40792 May  5  1999 ASPI8U2.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  37564 May  5  1999 ASPI8DOS.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  14386 May  5  1999 ASPI4DOS.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  35330 May  5  1999 ASPI2DOS.SYS*

So 2024 - 1999 = 25 years old floppy
seems to work OK!

But it crashed my raspberry power USB hub, too much current
had to reboot.
Normally I use it on a big PC, well that was long ago.

And some 20 year old harddisk that still works...
A 15 year old USB stick used every day...

>
That might be on its last legs. I knew someone who used them as
disposable items literally wearing them out the way they were used.

The only harddisk I ever lost was when I dropped it from the bookhelf,
it had a piece of music I composed.. and some other stuff, pity.

Many old SDcards.
I like one of the comments that says illegal copies will save the situation.
:-)

>
That is quite likely . Rare comedy shows and performances records off
air by talented amateurs do come to light from time to time and are
added to the BBC archives. Likewise for tape copies sent abroad that
ended up lost in some dark cupboard decades ago.

Yep.

I no longer have any 5 1/4 inch flops...