[ale] OT- Re: Cd-r life

[Greg Freemyer]

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 10:15 AM, Chris Fowler
<cfowler at outpostsentinel.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-10-04 at 09:58 -0400, Jim Kinney wrote:
>> 90+% or archival needs are environmental. magnetic media, optical
>> media, film, all require lightless, temperature and humidity
>> conditions to be met for maximum  lifespan.
>
> Crap,  are you tell me those quarter-inch carts I have in the attic that
> have been there for over 12yrs are worthless?

I was once hired to attempt a recovery from various tape / floppy /
etc. media stored in a basement for almost 10 years.  We had little or
no luck as I recall, but what little luck we did have was with
quarter-inch carts!

So if you're serious, I would pull em down and make new copies asap.

Unless you have huge bucks to spend, the best you can realistically do
is get half a dozen tape drives from ebay and try the tapes on them
one at a time.  One of the largest tape recovery companies in the
country is here in Piedmont Center (emag).  Even they don't do much
more than that.  (I had assumed they would try to adjust the tracking
etc. of their drives to get them to align with mis-aligned media, but
in general they don't do that.)

Greg