[ale] [OT] Lifespan of Storage Devices

[Boris Borisov]

Little off topic but ... :)

I recently installed Win 3.1 from sealed installation package 3.5"
floppies ... all went trough.
Also have Novell  Netware 3.12 unopened if somebody want to play ...
so many floppies inside :)

On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 2:54 PM, Alex Carver <agcarver+ale at acarver.net> wrote:
> On 7/29/2012 06:29, Raj Wurttemberg wrote:
>> You all will probably laugh at this. but. I am vintage computer collector
>> for Commodore and Apple ][ equipment. Many if not most of my old 5.25" disks
>> still work perfectly after almost 25 years. For the most part, the more
>> expensive floppies appear to be the best. I can see some discoloration or
>> "blotches" on my cheap floppies.
>
> Flexible magnetic media has the longest shelf life (assuming quality
> material and proper storage environment like temperature and humidity)
> primarily because the magnetic domains are larger and less susceptible
> to reordering than any other media.  Tapes are the longest lived if
> spooled and stored correctly.  There are plenty of examples of tape
> media surviving for 40+ years if they were archived in environmentally
> controlled vaults.  There are amazingly many cases of poorly stored
> tapes still surviving to some extent (i.e. stored in a basement under
> the stairs in a cardboard box).
>
> The main killer of tape media is print-through.  If the tape media is
> not sufficiently thick (or spooled without using a spacer layer), then
> magnetic domains on one layer of tape can imprint onto the adjacent
> layer when the tape is spooled tightly.  This takes a long time but it
> does happen eventually and will cause data corruption.  A spacer between
> the layers reduces the coupling between magnetic domains by increasing
> the distance.
>
> Hard drive platters fall in second place.  They decay faster than tape
> because the domains are smaller and more susceptible to reordering by
> adjacent domains.  Newer technology in read/write heads (GMR) and DSPs
> for the electronics may fix that problem and put platters on par with tape.
>
>
> Which reminds me, I need to fix my tape drive. :)
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