KEEP YOUR BACK-UP MEDIA CURRENT
Three years ago I did a series of interviews with an
elderly aunt and got some wonderful stories about her
family and particularly her sister--my grandmother. I
dutifully transcribed the interview tapes on the
computer and saved a back-up copy on a floppy disk. We
have since updated our computer from Mac to PC and of
course there is no floppy drive. I took the disk to
work where there are still some Mac hold-outs,
inserted the disk and got the "format" message. Over
the course of three years, the disk had deteriorated
and is unreadable. Even our in-house computer guru
could not extract the information. Fortunately, I
still have the cassette tapes of the interviews, but
the lesson is: don't assume that those old back-up
disks will last forever. This one was not exposed to
light, dust, etc. and still the information was lost!
Lenore Sroka
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