[Gllug] Data migration and electronic archaeology

[tet at accucard.com]

>What do you do in the Real World (TM) when your computing platform
>is reaching (or has passed) obsolesence?

In my case, old machines have been redeployed as file/print servers
or firewalls once they cease to be useful as a desktop client.

>Or when all that carefully gathered data is useless when you don't have
>the device left to read it - or the format has long been forgotten?

Sorry to sound like a broken record, but this is *much* less of an issue
with SCSI. I can still connect my 10 year old SCSI disks and tapes to a
modern machine. Try finding a machine nowadays to which you can connect
an MFM hard drive...

That said, there are still issues. Tapes and the drives to read them
do wear out. But then, you should be perioically rearchiving stuff
on newer and more durable media where possible anyway. It's not hard
to transfer data from Exabyte onto DLT or CD, for example. Sure,
it's a pain in the ass, but it comes down to whether your data is
sufficiently valuable to warrant the effort or not.

Tet


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