Marvin Humphrey wrote: >In the long run, all hard drives are ticking time bombs, compared to analog >tape! Just last week, we had some 1/4" tapes from 1979 in... they had to be >baked, then the splicing tape adhesive which oozed had to be cleaned with >q-tips and solvent, and finally it played back gorgeously! How the hell do >you get inside a hard drive to do that kind of restoration work as it >degrades over decades? Are you using hard drives as an archival medium? That would be pretty odd. BTW, glad you got your shedding tapes to play. I can guarantee you, however, that the playback is not as good as it was after the first pass back in 1979. There is degradation. Properly cloned digital data, however, should suffer no loss. >PS: Here's something wacky: I hear that of all the current digital tape >formats, the one with the greatest long term stability is ADAT, because it >has the lowest information density. Yeah, except with all of Alesis's financial problems, I wouldn't count on them being around 20 years from now. Also, I don't expect any new ADAT machines will be manufactured 20 years from now, and with Alesis not there to supply rubber parts, etc. to keep the old machines going, it might be hard to get at that data. I believe properly maintained digital data has the best potential for long-term preservation. Obviously, you've got to clone before the storage medium suffers any degradation, and also move the data to new formats as they become available. Maintaining and updating such files, however, is a simple drag and drop operation. It's not a big PITA like restoring old analog tapes. Also, for anyone interested in long term access to original session audio, I think it's very important to archive original, contiguous tracks (beginning from a common start point) rather than simply keeping a Logic session. It would be great if Logic is still around years from now and is able to maintain backward compatibility over many decades, but I wouldn't count on it. Lee Blaske

Marvin Humphrey writes: >In the long run, all hard drives are ticking time bombs, compared to analog >tape! Just last week, we had some 1/4" tapes from 1979 in... they had to be >baked, then the splicing tape adhesive which oozed had to be cleaned with >q-tips and solvent, and finally it played back gorgeously! How the hell do >you get inside a hard drive to do that kind of restoration work as it >degrades over decades? Er, that's why I don't archive my data to Hard Drives. Oh, that and the fact that it's RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE compared to vastly more robust and reliable backup media such as CDr. I suppose Quantum and Seagate (etc.) would love us all to backup to Hard Drives! If you're worried about the long term storage of, say, CDr then simply make another clone of it every few years. This is vastly easier to do than the baking/solvent shenanigans needed for analog tape. f-erenc szabo, smarty pants Z+E+R+O+B+E+A+T "NOW POWERED BY THE MIRACLE OF THE TRANSISTOR!"

Lee Blaske and f-erenc szabo wrote: > [replies] Much of what I would write in response, I wrote earlier today to the logic-ot list. I'll forward you two the thread. -- Marvin Humphrey Proposed rule change for TV show "Survivor": Runner-up dies a horrible death.

Hi, May I invite you to continue this thread on the OT list. Marvin and Marc are already discussing it there, so make sure you're not missing important parts and subscribe now! ;-) Here is how to get to the OT list: to subscribe: logic-ot-subscribe@yahoogroups.com to post: logic-ot@yahoogroups.com This thread is moderated on the logic-users list. Bye, Joeri -- Joeri Vankeirsbilck joeri@... Belway Productions - http://www.belway.com List-admin Logic-users/SoundD*ver-users/Logic-TDM