A
friend has a production company with an audio studio. He
switched from reel to reel tape to hard files in the mid
1990s.
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He
called me in panic yesterday when he couldn't access one
of his original archival hard files.
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I
went over and was able to "wake the drive" by tapping
the hard file with the handle of a large screwdriver,
I'd have used a plastic mallet if I'd had one.
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NOTE:
Do not do this until every other trick has been tried!
Some hard files have glass platters and I had to tap
pretty damn hard and could easily have shattered glass
platters. [How hard? Like driving a nail in concrete.]
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We
were able to copy all the audio to a new drive but that
raised a question...
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I've
always said there are two types of hard files, those
that have died and those that will.
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I
warned him about the various ways hard files die, CD/DVD
ROM rot, how audio tape can have the binder (glue) that
holds the magnetic material (fancy rust) and become
unusable.
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"Other
then clay tablets with cuneiform, all media degrades
over time."
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He
also collects "tombstones". Not literally, he's a member
of a local history group and they make paper tracings of
the information on tombstones.
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I
asked "How many are barely legible?"
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"Quite
a few of the older ones."
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I
have no idea what he's going to do, he's 78, well off
financially and may decide to retire. That would be
suboptimal for former clients but he is facing a
nightmare in time alone to back up all the hard files.
Since each client's data is on their hard file(s), I
suggested he contact them and give them the hard files
with the suggestion "Back this up today!"
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Most
of us don't give much thought to preservation of
archival data but maybe we should.
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Here
are two links that look at the issue
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NOTE:
I've avoided Apple products and have no idea what magic
key strokes he's describing...and I'm happy to remain
ignorant.
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Several
friends have contacted me over the last 20 years with
I-Omega zip drives with "Data I have to recover!"
I
wished them luck and told them I have zero experience
with zip drives and intend to keep it that way.
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I
have had CD-R/DVD-R fail and 1 early commercial CD music
disk lose 2 tracks. I was a bit irritated but found a
new CD and tossed the old one.
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I
have a large "archive." [if such a mess of unorganized
data can qualify as an archive.] I haven't lost a drive,
yet. I'm in the process of pulling the most important
data to new hard drives. Since I have several Exabytes
of data...yea it's a lot of unfun.
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I
inherited 3 NTSC digital video editing systems after
helping upgrade a local production house upgrade to
digital. Digital video editing requires very fast RAID
hard files, older hard files that were perfect for NTSC
won't work. Not needing any video editing systems, I
salvaged the drives and sold the stripped carcasses. The
'unlimited' storage allowed me to save anything online I
found the least bit interesting. I'm having a difficult
time separating the wheat from the chaff.
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What to save and what to
let nature take her course....
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or just erase it all...
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