Warning of data ticking time bomb

BBC ^ | 03 July 2007 | Unknown

[LIConFem]

Yep. Vi, grep (and egrep), sed, cat, more, et cetera... God, I love Unix/Linux... (although VMS had its good points).

[N3WBI3]

Does not help for excel type data *including graphs* which dont go into csv or even worse database info..

[stainlessbanner]

Oh yeah, I've had plenty of coasters over the years. CD/DVD is not good media for archiving important data. Not sure what the industry standards are, but different manufacturers use varying thickness, too. The cheap media tends to cause problems with writing and accessing data.

There's really two parts to the discussion: the physical file format and the storage media. Both will need to be accessible and operational for future use.

Good advice on the two copies, too - thanks.

[N3WBI3]

Raises hand..

You are not alone

[CarrotAndStick]

That is indeed correct. I was just referring to the archival durability. A clay/stone tablet probably outlasts all!

[ShadowAce]

True—however, as someone mentioned upthread, PDF should stick around for quite a while. While you will not be able to easily work with that data, exporting spreadsheets out to PDF for archival purposes should work OK.

[N3WBI3]

although VMS had its good points

Ugg our VMS guy left to company and we are getting rid of our old DEC Vax in the next 6-10 months so I got pulled off of UNIX and stuck on the DEC... I hate it cd ~ is set def [000000.home.n3wbi3] Ugly to use...

[stainlessbanner]

I still have zip/jaz and bernoulli drives. Looks like they have a bunch of drivers available that should do the trick.

[cynwoody]

"If you stored something on a floppy disc just three or four years ago, you'd have a hard time finding a modern computer capable of opening it."

If it's not important, file it in the circular file. If it is important, and your machine lacks the needed drive, run out and buy a USB floppy drive.

I recently found a floppy from 1988 and managed to read it just fine. It contained a Lotus spreadsheet analysis of a proposed real estate investment.

[Frank Sheed]

Thanks! I checked and see that TigerDirect sells tons of external zip drives by Iomega for $140. I figure that even with my new laptop (coming soon), I can get one and use it on my USB port. All else will be saved as CD/DVD.

F

[ken in texas]

...another vi user!! Thought I was the last one!

Don't despair... there are still a few of us out here. :-)

[LIConFem]

The CLI isn't as succinct as Unix, but for those of us who do heavy development, VMS has some wonderful system services and library functions. For example; whereas Unix has signals, VMS has ASTs (Asynchronous System Traps) that allow one to send two longs worth of data along with an interrupt. And this can be done across cluster nodes as well. This was especially useful to me when I was writing real-time trading and market data applications.

[LIConFem]

Kwel!!!

[LIConFem]

:1,1 s/Kwel/Kewl/

;o)

[FreeInWV]

“Even with this fancy formats, you can always cat them on a Unix box, or edit in vi.”

Unless they saved everything in their micriofiche libary.

I have a collection of cutting edge (at one time) computer junk. There are punched cards, 8-inch floppies, disk platters, reel to reel tape, etc. Most everything stored there is saved in a format that has been lost to the ravages of time. Database info in proprietary formats, etc. So have their respective readers. Who keeps a working 8-inch floppy drive handy anyway?

[RightWhale]

580 terabytes of data - the equivalent of 580,000 encyclopaedias

LOL

If it's important, Wikipedia will preserve it.

[RightWhale]

Some CDs last barely two years. They look as permanent as the Grand Canyon, but they come apart.

[ken in texas]

Re: your remark about especially useful

I never worked on VMS systems much, but from all I've heard and read, VMS had, and may still have, one of the best implementations for HA clustering in the business.

[ken in texas]

:1,1 s/Kwel/Kewl/

No scan and replace needed... I know what you meant. ;-)

[LIConFem]

I certainly think so. Even the crummy (by today's standards) HSC-based clusters I set up back in '93 were incredible in terms of reliability. We had our govvies system running across several nodes (two hot, one stby, IIRC) and I don't recall ever having any problems with availability. And using the Blocking AST feature of the VMS DLM, I was able to keep trading and market data synchronized across all nodes, so that if a client placed a bid on one node, it would immediately show up on all (this was all kept in global sections).

I love Unix, but I do sometimes miss VMS.