Info Obsolete Storage

[CyclicUser]

My computer experience goes back to the days of punch cards. My computer building experience goes back to the days of the 286.
Through the years I have stored data on various media. Unfortunately, I did not transfer all this data to newer media. I am retired and am moving. While cleaning out all the crap I have accumulated over the past 40+ years, I am finding all kinds of old media. Unfortunately, a lot of the media has faded labels. I have floppies, Zip, Jaz, MO, super floppies, etc. I have had to rebuild and reactivate old systems. I am going through the tedious task of reviewing all this old media in order to save the important files. There are documents, pictures, recordings, digitized family movies, and other material that I want to keep or pass on to family. There is also a lot of crap that could have been discarded years ago.
The point here is that technology advances. Be realistic. I always thought that some system would be used again, and often it sat for years, never to be used again. Transfer all your data to newer media. If your data is backed up and sufficiently secure, wipe your old drives and media.

 

[mv2devnull]

Standard formats and rich metadata would not hurt, but those one should use/add already while generating the data.

 

[CP5670]

I have VMs or emulators of all my old PCs and files, and they work just as I had them back in the day, including a System 7 Mac, 98 box and XP box. I still have some game CDs but don't keep any other old media. Some of the files are mods or tools for old games that are difficult to even find on the internet today.

The Mac was actually challenging since the original drive on it (IBM 160MB SCSI drive from 1990) had some of my files as a kid, but the computer no longer booted and I think the PSU was dead. I couldn't read the drive on a modern machine, even with an old SCSI card and Mac emulation tools, but ended up connecting the drive to another Mac from that era and getting it all onto floppies.

 

[ultimatebob]

I guess that this is an advantage to uploading your backups to "the cloud". At that point, keeping the storage hardware upgraded to the latest standards becomes the data center's problem.

 

[zir_blazer]

I guess that this is an advantage to uploading your backups to "the cloud". At that point, keeping the storage hardware upgraded to the latest standards becomes the data center's problem.

Cloud backup services aren't eternal. Ask users that used Megaupload and Rapidshare, since both closed. Where is their stuff now? Several blog and social media sites also have dissapeared with everything they hosted, too. Heck, my mom used to rely on an ISP-provided account for webmail, and send work related stuff to it to have it accesible from anywhere as if was cloud storage. Eventually, the ISP screwed up their configuration, deleting all the stored emails with no compensation. Add in that if they hack the cloud provider, they can potentially access your data.

Cloud backup is useful if you want to access your data from somewhere else, but I don't think highly of giving your data to someone else to store. For long term storage, the sites could go down and I can bet that you wouldn't even notice. Imagine if a guy like the poster came after 20-30 years to check if Facebook still exists cause he uploaded all his stuff there, and finds it has already gone down years ago. Sort of like trying to restore things that you backuped and never used again, but without a physical copy at all.

 

[Muadib]

Nothing last forever. I moved most of my data with the times. I don't understand why you didn't do the same, OP.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Cloud backup services aren't eternal. Ask users that used Megaupload and Rapidshare, since both closed. Where is their stuff now? Several blog and social media sites also have dissapeared with everything they hosted, too. Heck, my mom used to rely on an ISP-provided account for webmail, and send work related stuff to it to have it accesible from anywhere as if was cloud storage. Eventually, the ISP screwed up their configuration, deleting all the stored emails with no compensation. Add in that if they hack the cloud provider, they can potentially access your data.

Cloud backup is useful if you want to access your data from somewhere else, but I don't think highly of giving your data to someone else to store. For long term storage, the sites could go down and I can bet that you wouldn't even notice. Imagine if a guy like the poster came after 20-30 years to check if Facebook still exists cause he uploaded all his stuff there, and finds it has already gone down years ago. Sort of like trying to restore things that you backuped and never used again, but without a physical copy at all.

This is encouraging -- someone with ideas like mine about the lemming-migration to the Cloud. Throw in the notion of a Facebook account for good measure. I backed away from Facebook about 13 years ago when security issues were announced, and I had an e-mail account that was still getting spam mail through Facebook 10 years later.

This also brings to mind certain subscription services, like Spotify. "For just $10 a year, you can listen to all the music you want." There was once a day when you could buy a 33rpm album, 8-track, cassette album, a CD -- and give it to someone as a gift. They could look at the album cover; they would appreciate your gift; they "owned" the album. they could hold it in their hands, and they would remember: "BonzaiDuck gave me this for Christmas five years ago."

People have subscriptions now for their cars, to listen to Sirius radio. How much of a leak in the wallet does that represent each month?

Maybe you can say that I've fallen behind in the 21st century. I don't think I like the 21st century very much. My 1995 Trooper SUV is now an Android Trooper of the 21st century, however. I feel like I've got the Library of Congress music collection in MP3 format in my car. But those files are in my possession. I feel like I have control of them.

I gave my dentist a DVD of the original "Manchurian Candidate" film -- part of an intellectual effort to enlighten him. He came back saying "I need to find my old DVD player." I have to remind him during my next visit that he can use his laptop ODD.

Oh! Do laptops no longer have ODDs?