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While cleaning a storage room, our staff found this tape containing #UNIX v4 from Bell Labs, circa 1973
Apparently no other complete copies are known to exist: https://gunkies.org/wiki/UNIX_Fourth_Edition
We have arranged to deliver it to the Computer History Museum
#retrocomputing
I recently dug up my father’s floppy disks. Stored in a dark dry attic. Each one contained about 10 photos of him on holidays and my birthday when i was 7. I had about 10 usable disks.
The disks are at least 25 years old. He died about 20 years ago.
It is true. Not all photos were saved but the disks held op really well!
The thing about floppies is they were mass produced with pressure to be the cheapest on the market for consumers. The newer the floppy, the more shit quailty it is and less likely to retain data. Tapes meant for enterprise storage meant for long term backups will be high quailty and has a pretty good chance of lasting decades.
Yeah if climate controlled they last a surprisingly long time. I’ve had 20-30 year old disks read ok. Honestly at this point I cant find a drive anywhere.
Magnetic tape can be pretty good. This specific tape I don’t know, but there’s a reason enterprises to this day STILL widely use magnetic tape to store archives.
Though, that may be because a single tape cassette can hold way more than a hard drive, and is cheaper. But I imagine they’d need to have longevity too.
I don’t think magnetic storage lasts that long. Even floppy disks become unreadable after sitting for 10 years in a box.
No they do not. Where did you get that piece of crap info from?
Most likely they’re thinking of VHS and audio tapes.
Where do people store these things? In a swamp?
From my box of floppy disks that where sitting in shelf since ~2000.
Good for you, I can find 40 year old disks that read fine.
Magnetic tape can last multiple decades. There’s no telling whether THIS magnetic tape lasted that long, but the medium is pretty hardy.
Keep 'em in a salt mine.
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I recently dug up my father’s floppy disks. Stored in a dark dry attic. Each one contained about 10 photos of him on holidays and my birthday when i was 7. I had about 10 usable disks.
The disks are at least 25 years old. He died about 20 years ago.
It is true. Not all photos were saved but the disks held op really well!
The thing about floppies is they were mass produced with pressure to be the cheapest on the market for consumers. The newer the floppy, the more shit quailty it is and less likely to retain data. Tapes meant for enterprise storage meant for long term backups will be high quailty and has a pretty good chance of lasting decades.
Yeah if climate controlled they last a surprisingly long time. I’ve had 20-30 year old disks read ok. Honestly at this point I cant find a drive anywhere.
Yeah, I’m lucky nobody threw them out it the mean time.
It’s not a very desirable or trendy way of keeping data.
I suspect that if you throw resources at the problem, you can tolerate much more degradation than standard tape readers.
Magnetic tape can be pretty good. This specific tape I don’t know, but there’s a reason enterprises to this day STILL widely use magnetic tape to store archives.
Though, that may be because a single tape cassette can hold way more than a hard drive, and is cheaper. But I imagine they’d need to have longevity too.
Magnetic tape storage is pretty standard. depends on many factors but might read just fine.