Brian K. White a écrit :
Any hard drives that are currently 20 years old are nothing like the ones today, and why should a hard drive degrade any more in 20 years sitting unpowered on a climate controlled shelf than a tape and tape drive?
the magnetic surface will probably not degrade, but the lubricant do. Oils is not good after more than a few years Most HDD I'v seen fail failed after the hollidays, not restarting from being stopped. Tape have no oil. The rubber may fail, but I have (audio) tapes from the 70' still good. however I have DAT tape backup drive failed...
about all that priceless NASA sattelite and remote probe research data thats disintegrating _as we speak_ on tapes?
and I was said NASA have lost some tapes :-) I've seen drafts as old as one hundred years and still in use (electric network) :-) oiled paper :-) no reader needed but eyes. only to show that this hole discussion have little meaning :-( If you need to keep the info, keep it on the today most available medium (cd, dvd, USB HDD, tape, whatever) and *copy* it on the next most available media asap. I copied my tapes to cd then cd to dvd and dvd to HDD. I dropped my tapes when my last tape reader broke, I have all my old cd somewhere. keep the old medium as long as possible. Thats all. jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.org http://news.opensuse.org/2009/04/13/people-of-opensuse-jean-daniel-dodin/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org