OT: backup panic?

Discussion:

OT: backup panic?

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Jan Panteltje

2024-09-13 03:47:58 UTC

Music industryâs 1990s hard drives, like all HDDs, are dying:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/music-industrys-1990s-hard-drives-like-all-hdds-are-dying/?comments=1&comments-page=1
The music industry traded tape for hard drives and got a hard-earned lesson.

Backup panic?
I have a thousand or more CD's and DVDs in a light proof alu box
I have some 24 year old floppies and a USB floppy reader...
And some 20 year old harddisk that still works...
A 15 year old USB stick used every day...
Many old SDcards.
I like one of the comments that says illegal copies will save the situation.
:-)

Martin Brown

2024-09-13 09:25:26 UTC

Permalink

You may find that the oxide coat falls off when you try to read them.

Post by Jan Panteltje
And some 20 year old harddisk that still works...
A 15 year old USB stick used every day...

That might be on its last legs. I knew someone who used them as
disposable items literally wearing them out the way they were used.

Post by Jan Panteltje
Many old SDcards.
I like one of the comments that says illegal copies will save the situation.
:-)

That is quite likely . Rare comedy shows and performances records off
air by talented amateurs do come to light from time to time and are
added to the BBC archives. Likewise for tape copies sent abroad that
ended up lost in some dark cupboard decades ago.

--
Martin Brown

Don Y

2024-09-13 10:55:55 UTC

Permalink

Post by Martin Brown
You may find that the oxide coat falls off when you try to read them.

Or, the drive/transport doesn't work. Or, the controller that
talks to it. Or, the OS/driver that talks to *that*!

The fallacy behind all storage mechanisms is that you have no
assurance of the data's integrity /and accessibility/ until (and
unless) you actually TRY to access it *and* verify it's integrity.

How do you reassure yourself that the contents of a particular
volume are /as they should be/ -- unless you have some sort
of "signature" that you can verify (in lieu of a duplicate copy
of the volume's contents)

[I maintain a database of all files in my "collection" along with
hashes of each so I can reassure myself that they are intact. I
am also "prompted" by that collection to let it reexamine volumes
that it hasn't had a chance to validate in a particular period
(it automatically validates the contents of any volume it "notices"
as being accessible)]

This is why there are mechanisms like patrol read to refresh/reassure
of the integrity of data that may not be actively inspected at this time.

Post by Martin Brown
That might be on its last legs. I knew someone who used them as disposable
items literally wearing them out the way they were used.

Thumb drives go to pot pretty quickly. Write times start to increase
dramatically. Eventually, they all seem to resort to a "read only" mode
which effectively makes them useless.

Jan Panteltje

2024-09-13 13:09:12 UTC

Permalink

On a sunny day (Fri, 13 Sep 2024 10:25:26 +0100) it happened Martin Brown

Post by Martin Brown

You may find that the oxide coat falls off when you try to read them.

Quite possible, lemme see

Just entered SLS Linux flopy disk A1 from 1998
is recognized...

Some other old floppy:
mount /dev/sdc /mnt/sdc1
raspberrypi: ~ # l /mnt/sdc1
total 136
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 12288 Feb 23 2000 lost+found/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 80234 Nov 22 2000 suti-0.8.tgz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 43687 Nov 22 2000 xste-0.3.tgz

OK that one is 24 years old

This is Microsoft Win 98 startup disk
raspberrypi: ~ # mount /dev/sdc /mnt/sdc1
mount: /mnt/sdc1: WARNING: source write-protected, mounted read-only.
raspberrypi: ~ # l /mnt/sdc1
total 1305
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 41302 May 5 1999 OAKCDROM.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4 May 5 1999 MSDOS.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 25473 May 5 1999 MSCDEX.EXE*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 30023 May 5 1999 MODE.COM*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 34566 May 5 1999 KEYBOARD.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 20263 May 5 1999 KEYB.COM*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 222390 May 5 1999 IO.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 33415 May 5 1999 HIMEM.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 64425 May 5 1999 FLASHPT.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8013 May 5 1999 FINDCD.EXE*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 65084 May 5 1999 FDISK.EXE*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 93242 May 5 1999 EXTRACT.EXE*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 58870 May 5 1999 EGA.CPI*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 275904 May 5 1999 EBD.CAB*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 17223 May 5 1999 DISPLAY.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 30742 May 5 1999 COUNTRY.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1062 May 5 1999 CONFIG.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 96546 May 5 1999 COMMAND.COM*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 30955 May 5 1999 BTDOSM.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 21971 May 5 1999 BTCDROM.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 456 May 5 1999 AUTOEXEC.BAT*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 29620 May 5 1999 ASPICD.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 40792 May 5 1999 ASPI8U2.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 37564 May 5 1999 ASPI8DOS.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 14386 May 5 1999 ASPI4DOS.SYS*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 35330 May 5 1999 ASPI2DOS.SYS*

So 2024 - 1999 = 25 years old floppy
seems to work OK!

But it crashed my raspberry power USB hub, too much current
had to reboot.
Normally I use it on a big PC, well that was long ago.

Post by Martin Brown

Post by Jan Panteltje
And some 20 year old harddisk that still works...
A 15 year old USB stick used every day...

That might be on its last legs. I knew someone who used them as
disposable items literally wearing them out the way they were used.

The only harddisk I ever lost was when I dropped it from the bookhelf,
it had a piece of music I composed.. and some other stuff, pity.

Post by Martin Brown

Post by Jan Panteltje
Many old SDcards.
I like one of the comments that says illegal copies will save the situation.
:-)

Yep.

I no longer have any 5 1/4 inch flops...

john larkin

2024-09-13 16:16:11 UTC

Permalink

Post by Jan Panteltje
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/music-industrys-1990s-hard-drives-like-all-hdds-are-dying/?comments=1&comments-page=1
The music industry traded tape for hard drives and got a hard-earned lesson.
Backup panic?
I have a thousand or more CD's and DVDs in a light proof alu box
I have some 24 year old floppies and a USB floppy reader...
And some 20 year old harddisk that still works...
A 15 year old USB stick used every day...
Many old SDcards.
I like one of the comments that says illegal copies will save the situation.
:-)

Copy them to Dropbox before it's too late.

Jan Panteltje

2024-09-14 05:56:19 UTC

Permalink

On a sunny day (Fri, 13 Sep 2024 09:16:11 -0700) it happened john larkin

Post by john larkin

Copy them to Dropbox before it's too late.

Not sure dripbox will still work without power after WW3 nuking!
I think online storage is a bad idea, also for security reasons.

john larkin

2024-09-14 14:48:51 UTC

Permalink

Post by Jan Panteltje
On a sunny day (Fri, 13 Sep 2024 09:16:11 -0700) it happened john larkin

Post by john larkin

Copy them to Dropbox before it's too late.

Not sure dripbox will still work without power after WW3 nuking!
I think online storage is a bad idea, also for security reasons.

What's on all those CDs and DVDs?

Jan Panteltje

2024-09-14 15:56:50 UTC

Permalink

On a sunny day (Sat, 14 Sep 2024 07:48:51 -0700) it happened john larkin

Post by john larkin

Post by Jan Panteltje
On a sunny day (Fri, 13 Sep 2024 09:16:11 -0700) it happened john larkin

Post by john larkin

Copy them to Dropbox before it's too late.

Not sure dripbox will still work without power after WW3 nuking!
I think online storage is a bad idea, also for security reasons.

What's on all those CDs and DVDs?

Code I wrote, OSes I downloaded, movies, stuff I recorded (I used to add Dutch subtitles to
some English videos for a local organisation here, wrote the software for that too),
website backup, what not, circuit diagrams., peeseebee layouts...
There are also M-DISCs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC
I have an LG M-DISC burner in a PC. sitting on the table next to me.
The floppies I simple keep in a steel drawer upstairs where there also is some
bags with peeseebee etching stuff, recently that started leaking,
made a new sealed bag, have not used that stuff in years,
did not seem to destroy the floppies, but you could smell it..
So, big fire would wipe out most, website would stay (hosted by some company).
Much on the DVDs is in special format not easily readable by others.
There is also a lot on Reiser filesystem,.
seems Linus wants to drop support for that from the kernel.
I may well drop support for Linux and write my own Unix like system if he does.

And I have at least 14 TB harddisk space in use now...

Have most interesting Usenet postings all the way back to 1998.

There is more, datasheets, youtube videos I made, videos from others, the usual stuff...
This raspi alone has a 4 TB Toshiba harddisc hanging from it..
raspberrypi: ~ # df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 30421240 27573940 1502116 95% /
devtmpfs 3879380 0 3879380 0% /dev
tmpfs 4044244 0 4044244 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 1617700 1336 1616364 1% /run
tmpfs 5120 4 5116 1% /run/lock
/dev/mmcblk0p1 258095 50413 207682 20% /boot
tmpfs 808848 24 808824 1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sda2 3844420600 2748776460 900283476 76% /mnt/sda2

Those 4 TB Toshiba harddiscs are really very good..
And there is all the SDcards, USB sticks...

You?