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New I wrote and edited a newspaper in the mid 90s
A couple of years ago, I decided I'd like to put my columns up on my website for posterity (vanity). The floppies I had them on were worthless. The paper copies were yellow but perfectly readable. The sheer volume of "stuff" we have on magnetic media guarantees that not all of it is going to be refreshed every five years.

And even if it is, are we going to run it through import/export filters to keep it in a fresh format? I worked in an office in the late 90s where we wanted some of the document templates the secretary used. It turned out they were all in a format for a word processor that only existed on her hard drive ... which she had wiped on her last day on the way out the door. The new secretary spent the next two weeks manually recreating the ones we thought we'd need.
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Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
New Back in the DOS days there was a backup utility
called Fastback Pro or Fastback Plus or some such nonsense. They used to come out with a new version on a regular basis. They were not huge proponents of backward compatibility. You couldn't have 2 different versions on your machine. As soon as our idiot but fearless leader upgraded backup versions, we had no older backups. Pure genius: what better way to insure that we get it right the first time.
The old days weren't necessarily better. <shudder>
New You have to work at maintaining that stuff
just like anything else. I'll wager the Beatles master tapes get shuttled (rewound onto a new reel) every year or so (magnetic tape that is not shuttled develops "print through" - a pre-echo bleed through from adjacent winding).

I just spent a few weeks transferring the music I wrote in the 80's to a hard drive (along with some CD backups). The original sequences were done with an Ensoniq ESQ-1 sequencer/synth and then data dumped as sysex messages to the floppy drive of a Mirage sampler. I still have the Mirage and the ESQ-1 and recently found my floppies in a box after the move. The Mirage is getting pretty twitchy and is clearly on its last legs so I babied it until I got all the data transferred.

The process involved loading 1/3 of a floppy into Mirage memory (this constitutes a full sequence memory dump) while running a special version of its OS, then patching its MIDI in to ESQ-1's MIDI out and vice versa. Telling ESQ to request sequence data over MIDI. Rebooting Mirage into performance OS. Repatching MIDI cables into a star config with ESQ-1 out feeding all MIDI in's including the computer sequencer (Digital Performer), editing ESQ track settings to echo all internally patched tracks to MIDI channels, slaving the computer to external sync and hitting record, hitting play on ESQ and "transferring" the sequence by "recording" the data in real time one segment at a time. Then recreating the arrangement/song sequence in DP, along with entering patch info and notes for each track.

Repeat for each of 30ish songs. I can get through a song in about 2 hours once I get into the groove.

The good news is I now have original performances captured as DP files on my Mac. The bad news is I'll probably have to do something similar 5 years from now.

Expect the same amount of work for your music lib, DVD's etc. Disk drives are getting cheaper and I see no reason not to have 3 HD's with full copies of all your media. For me its an external hard drive, my lap top, and a desktop server (ancient 400 MHz G4 with enlarged disk) that are all mirrored - plus judicious use of burned DVD's for particularly precious stuff.

Get used to it.



[link|http://www.blackbagops.net|Black Bag Operations Log]

[link|http://www.objectiveclips.com|Artificial Intelligence]

[link|http://www.badpage.info/seaside/html|Scrutinizer]
     Infoworld Journo in "Is Idiot And Shithead" Shocker! - (pwhysall) - (12)
         And transparently so - (drewk) - (11)
             Now, I'm ambivalent about DRM - (pwhysall) - (10)
                 No no ... Microsoft Whatever Server 2004 XP is BRILLANT [1] - (drewk) - (9)
                     Yes, there are - (ben_tilly) - (4)
                         How many documents important to you ... - (drewk) - (3)
                             Many scholarly works - (tuberculosis) - (2)
                                 Yeah, I was just being selfish - (drewk) - (1)
                                     Historians 100 years from now will agree with you. - (ben_tilly)
                     It's George Washington's Hatchet all over again. - (Another Scott) - (3)
                         I wrote and edited a newspaper in the mid 90s - (drewk) - (2)
                             Back in the DOS days there was a backup utility - (hnick)
                             You have to work at maintaining that stuff - (tuberculosis)

After personal optimization sets in, you have a population with very few abilities and a great many needs.
87 ms