disaster - computer stuff

Frank Fusco

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:eek:

I have had a request for a copy of a magazine article I wrote about 15 years ago. When I wrote it, I thought I was being very careful saving it. I put it on a floppy disk.
Well.....I now have need for that article and retrieved the floppy from where it was carefully stored. Put on my external 'A' drive and....nuttin'.
Went through some 'puter gymnastics to open "any file" and, voila, got.....just a little garbage and a few words. The article is several thousand words.
Dunno wats wrong.
Does stuff fade from floppies or wat?
I'll probably have to write to publisher and hope they will send me a copy.
 

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Yup. Floppies are notorious for that kind of thing. There are companies though that specialize in data retrieval. Don't know if they work with floppies, but it might be worth a shot. It's probably expensive though...
 
Sorry, Frank, happens to the best of us. I try to always have TWO copies of important files. And really, hard drives are so big these days, you might as well just keep it on your main HD as well. (unless you store terabytes of video)

On the other hand, OCR+scanning software is really quite good these days. So you should be able to scan it in and convert it to text.
 
Yup. Floppies are notorious for that kind of thing. There are companies though that specialize in data retrieval. Don't know if they work with floppies, but it might be worth a shot. It's probably expensive though...

Yep, I know about those but would like to exhaust other possibilities first. Most importantly, is anything left to restore. Hate to pay for nothing.
I found another with some family history on it, dated 1994, that only brought up a message that the disk must be formatted before it can be used. I know that would erase everything, so I didn't do it. Another (yes, I'm doing some 'puter archeology today) had a photo on it dated 2003 and it opened just fine.
 
I had an 'incident' last year when a computer drive died. Really annoyed me.

So I've got a two pronged approach to backups now.

1) I use an online backup service. Relatively cheap peace of mind, since it constantly updates itself with any new or changed files I have on my hard drive. I only use it for backing up the 'my documents' folder, which, has all my photos and important documents and stuff.

2) I bought a networked drive. Called a NAS. Basically, it has two 1 terabyte drives in it that are mirrored. If one drive fails, I can pull it out and replace it without losing anything. A couple of times a week I use something called 'synctoy' to update that with the documents off of my computer.

My work PC gets the same basic treatment as well.

That gives me some local redundancy in case of something happening locally, and offsite peace of mind if something worse happens..
 
The way I understand floppies is that they are coated with iron oxide and putting information on them is a process of passing a portion of the disc through a magnetic field which aligns the particles in a specific order that can be read as "information". This "permanence" is due to the iron oxide maintaining the magnetic state imparted to it as it passes through the before mentioned magnetic field. Problem is, it's not permanent. Many factors can cause the iron oxide to lose it's orientation. Time alone can do it but certain environmental factors can speed it up. I would say take it to a professional. FYI storage on CDs is not permanent either. Different reasons, same result.
 
Floppy storage is definitely not permanent storage; the magnetic patterns have a finite life. Same goes for tape, or for any other storage medium. Microfilm has shown itself to be about as long-lived as anything high-tech so far, when it's stored EXTREMELY carefully, but still can't be regarded as permanent. The longest-lived LOW-tech storage medium in common use is low-acid paper.

Not only do the magnetic fields on floppies degrade with age, the floppy drives themselves can't be counted on to be there to read 'em. All electronic equipment has a pretty finite life.

If ya want to keep something you think of as important, your best bet is... hardcopy.
 
Floppy storage is definitely not permanent storage; the magnetic patterns have a finite life. Same goes for tape, or for any other storage medium. Microfilm has shown itself to be about as long-lived as anything high-tech so far, when it's stored EXTREMELY carefully, but still can't be regarded as permanent. The longest-lived LOW-tech storage medium in common use is low-acid paper.

Not only do the magnetic fields on floppies degrade with age, the floppy drives themselves can't be counted on to be there to read 'em. All electronic equipment has a pretty finite life.

If ya want to keep something you think of as important, your best bet is... hardcopy.

you got that right.. the only semi sure way of hanging on to it, is the online approach that brent mentioned but even that can have a oops but its usually covered elsewhere as well so they cover there own mishaps..
 
Several years ago - I added a second hard drive to my computer - just for data storage.

I store ALL my data on a secone hard drive.

I copied ALL the floppy stuff I had onto the second hard drive.

If I need to change computers - or reformat the operating system I can do all of that and still have my "other hard drive"

Now of course - a hard drive can bite the dust. Soooooo.

I also have a seagate "external hard drive" that I back up my internal data hard drive to. In essence - I mirror the data drive.

I use Outlook for email. It the calender, I set a reminder to do my backup to my external drive.

I thought about and considered all sorts of backup measures. I don't think anything is totally foolproof, but I think, I am pretty safe for data backup.

I used to have a couple of hundred floppys - now I think I have a couple of empty ones hanging around somewhere.
 
Went through some 'puter gymnastics to open "any file" and, voila, got.....just a little garbage and a few words. The article is several thousand words.
Dunno wats wrong.


Frank,

I'm betting it's still there. The problem may be you're opening it in a different program than the one you used to write it. Files sometimes look like that when you open them in an incompatible program.

"Course, that doesn't mean you still have a copy of wordperfect 3.6 lying around... ;)

Thanks,

Bill
 
My money is on the "toast" prognosis. Magnetic film media just doesn't hold up well over the years.

On a slight tangent...

Back in 1982, the band I was playing in recorded half a dozen songs at a high-end (in its time) recording studio. The master tape was 24 tracks on a 2" wide tape. The good stuff...I think we were paying around $100 per reel back then. Fast forward to about 6 or 7 years ago, and we decided to try getting a digital copy of the master tapes, so we could re-mix the songs with today's tools. Although the original studio had been closed for years, we tracked down the new owner of the tape machine our stuff was recorded on. (Turns out he was a good friend, with a state-of-the-art digital and analog studio.)

Unfortunately, every single one of the master tapes was unreadable. They looked fine, but as soon as the tape started moving through the machine, the magnetic emulsion started peeling off the mylar, leaving something like semi-hardened pudding on the playback heads and rollers. I was not there, but I was told it made a mess of the tape machine, and took hours to clean up after each attempted reel.

Moral of the story...don't commit irreplaceable stuff to magnetic film media. ;)
 
Isn't it somewhat deceiving finding that information printed or written on paper can last much, much, much more that any of all those modern devices/systems?

I've read somewhere that even CDs and DVDs are likely to be damaged by some sort of fungus or bacteria that makes them unreadable as well

Besides, books neither need batteries, nor a reading device apart from your own brain, try to retrieve the information stored in a CD by just looking at it:(

Yesterday there was a blackout where I leave that lasted for about one hour.
Everything was paralised, shops could not sell because their cash registers dind't work, people could not pay with credit cards, automatic cashiers didn't work either so people could not retrieve cash, even in those shops that could sell you things without the cash register reading bar codes shop assistants had problems calculating mentally the change they should give you as they were so used to the machine telling them what amount they should give back.

I'll let you take your own conclusions.:(
 
Thanks all. This was made back in the near primitive days of computing. I, like most non-geeks, believed everything saved on a disk was forever. It has been stored well in plastic box. I dug around in the old file cabinet and, fortunately, found the original typed manuscript. Paper saves stuff OK. I'll have to completely retype but that's not a major project.
From what y'all said, though, I'm concerned about something. We have a VHS tape in the safe deposit box that is very valuable to our family and irreplaceable. It has been there since 1996. I think I'll get it transferred to a DVD.
 
...I'll have to completely retype but that's not a major project...

If you have a scanner, chances are it came with some software that can convert the scanned pages into and editable document. You'd still need to proof it and check for errors, but it might be faster than typing. Do you have a scanner, and do you know if any OCR software came with it?
 
If you have a scanner, chances are it came with some software that can convert the scanned pages into and editable document. You'd still need to proof it and check for errors, but it might be faster than typing. Do you have a scanner, and do you know if any OCR software came with it?

I have never had, or seen, a reliable OCR program. I used to review software and found the OCR stuff was, invariably, useless. Might be some good stuff out there now but I don't have it. Plus, I don't have the full Adobe to convert to usable Word. I have been typing since I was 13 years old, this is not a big deal for me. Plus, I can do some editing as I go, the story needs updating enneyhow. Thanks.
 
Several years ago - I added a second hard drive to my computer - just for data storage.

I store ALL my data on a secone hard drive.

I copied ALL the floppy stuff I had onto the second hard drive.

If I need to change computers - or reformat the operating system I can do all of that and still have my "other hard drive"

Now of course - a hard drive can bite the dust. Soooooo.

I also have a seagate "external hard drive" that I back up my internal data hard drive to. In essence - I mirror the data drive.

I use Outlook for email. It the calender, I set a reminder to do my backup to my external drive.

I thought about and considered all sorts of backup measures. I don't think anything is totally foolproof, but I think, I am pretty safe for data backup.

I used to have a couple of hundred floppys - now I think I have a couple of empty ones hanging around somewhere.

Can't say that I did it deliberately, but have done same thing to the wife's computer.. need to do mine as well.. but her desktop died - motherboard problem... I bought her another one and transferred the hard drive from the dead one to the new one... then the new one died a couple of weeks back... we took a power hit and I don't have ups on it so the operating system wound up corrupted.... finally got a new XP system on the machine, formatted one of the drives just for storage.

It's been a task since I'm not very computer literate, but took it to a tech and explained the situation and what I thought we could do... all he wanted to do was charge me $150 to "maybe" be able to save her data, but he wanted to format both drives, the reload an operating system.
After talking with my son in Austin, who is a programmer manager for an IBM division, he sent me a new XP OS that he had as a spare and a program called UBUNTU - a linux based operating system... using the ubuntu I could get the computer up and running enough to clean up one drive, move all the data to that drive, then reloaded the XP on the other... still can't find the internet with it, but working on it...

Nothing to do with your problem Frank, sorry to have hijacked your thread... but what everyone says is correct according to my son... floppies have a definite life span.. as do magnetic tapes... my wife has been collecting a lot of the Walt Disney movies and a bunch are on tapes...according to the son, in a few years they will be useless..

another factor is: newer computers aren't being made with a floppy disk drive... the new machine I bought my wife doesn't have an "A" drive port.

Hopefully, your editor can provide you a copy of your article, in electronic format so you don't have to retype it....good luck
 
Since these articles were published in 1994, I have changed my ways. I used to back-up on Yahoo Briefcase, a floppy or CD and in my computer. Briefcase is gone so I now use Mozy and on two flash drives, one is stored in my gun safe, the other is just in my desk. With completed material I also put on multiple CDs or DVDs in addition to being in my 'puter.
BTW, my 'A' drive is external plug in, not used very often.
 
I have never had, or seen, a reliable OCR program. I used to review software and found the OCR stuff was, invariably, useless. Might be some good stuff out there now but I don't have it. Plus, I don't have the full Adobe to convert to usable Word. I have been typing since I was 13 years old, this is not a big deal for me. Plus, I can do some editing as I go, the story needs updating enneyhow. Thanks.

I'm guessing the review you did was some years ago. Things have improved. ;) I can understand if you're a fast typist and want to do edits as you go, but I just wanted to make it clear to others reading this thread that OCR is pretty decent these days.

And the "full Adobe to convert to usable Word" statement has me confused. :huh: Adobe is a software company and Word is a software product (from a different company) and neither have much to do with OCR software. At least with the OCR stuff I've used, you scan the page then tell the software what format you want it saved in. You just pick a format that's compatible with your tools, up to and including plain text, which pretty much any computer out there can read.
 
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