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Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

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Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#21

Post by ralferoo »

biofox wrote: post #9
mystifyingpoi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when the company goes under > when the accounts stop being paid I've never experienced such case, did you? Something much more likely is for a person to drop their phone into the toilet, buy a new one, and completely lose access to their only backup which is Google Photos, because they don't own a computer anymore and it is their only device.

I lost the only recordings of my band when Myspace Music died. At one point, I also had files on RapidShare. They probably weren't of any value, but I have no idea what they were now.

What happened to the original files that you uploaded to Myspace?

Why wouldn't you have made any attempt to preserve any of copy of your data anyway? Even if you believed the files would stay online forever, it's surely always more convenient to use local files than re-download every time?

(but also sorry you lost your last physical copy of your memories, that kind of sucks and sorry if my comment comes across as quite insensitive)

Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#24

Post by crtasm »

biofox wrote: post #9
mystifyingpoi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when the company goes under > when the accounts stop being paid I've never experienced such case, did you? Something much more likely is for a person to drop their phone into the toilet, buy a new one, and completely lose access to their only backup which is Google Photos, because they don't own a computer anymore and it is their only device.

I lost the only recordings of my band when Myspace Music died. At one point, I also had files on RapidShare. They probably weren't of any value, but I have no idea what they were now.

In case you hadn't heard, there's a sizable archive here https://archive.org/details/myspace_dragon_hoard_2010

and I see another collection mentioned on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19569865

Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#26

Post by organsnyder »

BrenBarn wrote: post #19
st_goliath wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The next hard drive was an order of magnitude larger than the old one, and so on. Ah yes, the good old "old PC" folder that you would find on pretty much every Windows PC that used to have another "old PC" folder inside it somewhere, possibly inside an "external HDD (old)" folder :-) Until the PC (or the HDD inside it) died surprisingly, people didn't have backups, or the backups turned out to be burned CDs that we…

I still have a bunch of these called "FromOld".

Same! It's in Dropbox now. I found the source from the very first code I got paid to write, back in 1998. I was 14, and mostly self-taught. One of these days I'm going to run it through static analysis and see how many security holes there were.

Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#28

Post by felooboolooomba »

As a kid back then, floppies were expensive if you were using your pocket money or hard earned side hustle stash. Floppies were used, abused and reused until that dreadful bad sector. Even after the bad sector if you knew its location. But you knew the floppy time was up.

Kids today will newer know the feeling of unwrapping a fresh package of 10 floppies. The sound, the smell, the texture, the stickers, the formatting, the wast free space, ... as much as retail therapy is a thing, I think that was floppy therapy.

Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#29

Post by RetroTechie »

demute wrote: post #11

Efficient market hypothesis applied to this topic would say that if you really do have a floppy, you should already have made a copy of it. If that’s Not the case, transform it to a punched card and be done with it. The chance that one would have anything important on a floppy that is not already backed up in the year of 2026 must be close to zero.

> The chance that one would have anything important on a floppy that is not already backed up in the year of 2026 must be close to zero.

In the case of personal files: probably true. Who needs 20y old tax filings.

But there are exceptions. For example: sometimes games were released (binary only), decades later an author dies, relatives clean out the attic & flog some old computer junk on eBay, buyer goes through the stuff & discovers source code for a game that was believed to be lost long ago.

Or a never-released book manuscript is discovered in similar fashion.

It's not often, but it does happen.

Re: Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks

#30

Post by artisinal »

felooboolooomba wrote: post #28

As a kid back then, floppies were expensive if you were using your pocket money or hard earned side hustle stash. Floppies were used, abused and reused until that dreadful bad sector. Even after the bad sector if you knew its location. But you knew the floppy time was up. Kids today will newer know the feeling of unwrapping a fresh package of 10 floppies. The sound, the smell, the texture, the stickers, the formattin…

> the feeling of unwrapping a fresh package of 10 floppies

For us floppies just appeared in the home! I think my dad took them from the office so he could work from home.

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