John wrote: > The best time to do that is BEFORE they become dead media. There's > usually a period when use of the new media formats overlaps with the > old media formats. > > Before my last computer that supported 5.25" floppies died, I copied > the important DATA to 3.5" floppies. Those, in turn, were copied to CD- > ROM before my last computer with a 3.5" drive was replaced (although I > have since then come into possession of an older computer that has a > functional 3.5" drive). Meanwhile, the DATA is stored on multiple CD- > ROMs and multiple external HardDisk drives. > > The other side of the coin though is that much of that old DATA is no > longer important enough to deserve preservation.
I transferred all my 5.25" floppy discs to 3.5" floppy discs. The last computer I had still had a 3.5" disc drive built in, a special request of the build, although by that stage I'd moved all that information to hard drives. I no longer have anything other than a CD/DVD drive now built in, although I think there is an external ZIP drive *somewhere*, as I may have some information on a few of those discs which escaped assimilation. I really don't look at much of the information that I've moved to different formats over the years, but it has been very useful on several occasions. The only problem I've had from time to time is opening an old type of file, but I've always found a solution on the net. The bottom line, as with many things in life, is you don't miss it until its gone. So I'm prepared to keep storing things, although I do a clean out from time to time of stuff which I have no use for. Malcolm -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
