Trying to re-read the bits and bytes
My distrust of electronic data storage is similar to that felt by an owner of an automobile that has seen “better days”. Each time I’m able to recover a file of interest, it’s like getting back to the driveway after a perilous road trip.
Like the line from the old song, “I’ve seen a few” methods of archiving my digital treasures over the years. In no particular order (perhaps a bit chronological), there have been Hollorith cards, mag tapes, cassette tapes, diskettes in a bewildering bouquet of sizes, optical data, more mag tapes, hard drives. You get the idea. Just in diskettes, I’ve had 8 inch, 5.25 inch (single sided, double sided, flippies, various bit densities), 3.5 inch (same variations less the flippies). The variety of light based storage still keeps me guessing.
Why, just this evening, it took three computers to finally read a DVD that I’d “burned” only hours before. Try to imagine the futility of digging out a CD from a decade ago.
No sense laying responsibility at the door of the media factory. When you can buy storage for pennies on the dollar, what kind of insurance could anyone provide. Some of the older hard drives might be OK (one more reason for keeping old computers “on standby” in the vault), but if data hasn’t been needed in years, what could suddenly inject importance?
I’m not alone; anyone that deals with facts that are worth more than a Twittered moment is going through the same stress. No wonder that insomnia is on the rise.
