Hard Core And Soft Storage

I had until recently in my loft an array of hardware from my first adventures into the world of personal computers. From weird and brightly coloured, diskless PCs to old PC compatible boxes.

What I also had and still have is a huge number of bits and bobs of media. Floppy disks, Zip disks and games cartridges. All of which are in an indeterminate state of readability.

Although there is stuff on them that I might want the time to search through them means that I will probably destroy them and send them to landfill. Sorry I mean the incredible effective recycling facilities that our local government provides (note the sarcasm).

But what if I did wamt something from them?

Priceless photographs digital or scanned.

Documents for which the hard copy has been lost or never existed because they were transmitted electronically.

List of names and addresses of friends and relatives.

Or of course a huge stack of your favourite porn lovingly assembled from across the Internet.

We do live in a throw-away society, particularly where PCs, electronic media and the Internet is concerned. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that no matter how old the recording media you would be able to recover those beloved images of your favourite porn starlet, or indeed your household accounts at some point in the distant future.

Well, if a new project currently in gestation bears fruit that is just what you’ll be able to do. You can read all about it in this article I found today.

In the mean time I’d advise keeping backups on two different media formats just in case.