You know I just found a box of good old five and a quarters (remember the old whole punch read/write trick?) and if someone does have access to a drive perhaps I could borrow it to try to transfer data? Or maybe at the next meeting we could work up a transfer station :) --j On 7/30/08, Smith, Craig A <Craig.A.Smith at honeywell.com> wrote: > >I wasn't the original poster on this one, but... > >I'm surprised to hear that these disks are expected to fail at this point. > >I guess it has been 20 years since I looked at some of my old disks but I > >was thinking I could copy some of the files off of them, copy them to my > >HDD and toss the disks in the trash > > > I believe storage is the key. The magnetic domains should be good to the Curie point (768°C for iron) but hot, humid conditions affects the support medium, turning it into a gooey mess. I recall a spot on NPR about a steam pipe breaking at the Smithsonian and the resulting loss of irreplaceable jazz recordings. I have cassette tapes that are over 20 years old and still play. Of course analog recordings may degrade more gracefully than digital. > > If the original poster can find a 5.25" floppy drive, I would be interested to know if the data transfer is successful. > > > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >