Preserving Old Valuable Tapes

[woodchips]

Hello, can I add my twopennyworth.

Don't forget that you are not only archiving the material, but also something that will, in decades to come, will be able to read that material. I had a tape backup on my computer, one day I managed to blow it up but no replacements could read my old tapes, and this was just a few years.

It may sound silly but a 1/4" reel to reel tape recorder could be the optimum choice. I, and many others, have found that if stored in a cardboard box in the wardrobe then the tapes don't seem to deteriorate. I have been playing cassettes I made for the car about 30 years ago, and for the first 10 or so years were stored in the car, they still sound pretty good to me. A 1/4" RtR has got to be the simplest possible transcription mechanism for storing and replaying information. If necessary all you need is a head and some way to move the tape. Resampling can be done by whatever you are putting the audio into.

A cassette recorder is an alternative, but the tracks are narrower and the mechanism far harder to replicate.

To summarise, the simpler the archive medium the more certain you can get some way of reading it. In my book CDRs, even disc drives are not simple. It doesn't help to look backwards because the 60s technology was large and robust. If you have ideas about repairing a CD player then take one to pieces now, where would you even get spaers such as the track following piezo actuators.

What about flash memory sticks? They are quoted as having a lifetime of 20 years.

Never compress. Many compression algorithms are serial in that the current data depends on what has just gone before. If the previous data is wrong due to a dropout then it becomes essentialy impossible to recreate the following data. The trouble with this is that all rotating storage now uses compression, you would have to go back to the first of the MFM winchester drives to escape.

Avoid digital storage. The trouble with digital storage is that it is either there, or not. You don't get a faint digital signal, think the TV switchover or DAB radio. CDRs use error correction, but when you get just too many errors then what happens? On audio doesn't it just repeat the last sector because you just won't notice, for digital you end up with an error message.

There is of course the option of renting storage in the 'cloud', but would you actually rely on it? Even now you get whole websites suddenly disappearing, what about Compuserve just closing OurWorld some time back.

Bob

[ppppenguin]

Originally Posted by woodchips

It may sound silly but a 1/4" reel to reel tape recorder could be the optimum choice.....

If you have the space, the money to buy or rent the space, protect that space from fire, flood and pestilance. Hope the tape chemistry doesn't throw another sticky fit......

There is no single optimal solution. Dense media, like HDD, put a lot of eggs in one basket and in 100 years time may be totally unreadable because we don't have the associated hardware or a myriad of other reasons. But we can easily clone them without losing anything and they are cheap and small so we can keep multiple copies. That doesn't apply to 0.25" analogue.

[Roger13]

Hi.

This is quite a debate. It seems to me that 'a little of everything' is the only sensible answer. I archive anything really important on every medium I have available; R/R, Cassette,Minidisc,CDR/DVD,HDD. So unless I'm unbelievably unlucky, something should survive!

Cheers,
Roger.

PS: Call me paranoid, but I just don't trust solid state memory.......

[dave walsh]

You're right Roger,quite a debate and a very long forum history. No "reel" answer so far and lots of different views.. I've said before that it might be usefull to have a "sticky" under the "Preserving" heading. Maybe it could include this years other similar and informative threads from the end of January onwards? There is an "Archive of Tapes" sticky but of course that's illustrated covers not info on the tapes or their digital transcription. Dave W

[Dave Anderson]

I want to thank you all for your very interesting comments. I think all I need is something that will fractionally exceed my own personal life expectancy. After which the tapes or hard drives or whatever can self-destruct for all I care. Nobody else will be interested in these tapes when I'm gone!

Now then, time to do some maths. I am a young lad of only 48. I'm feeling pretty well at the moment. How long have I got? Maybe 30 or 40 years (if I'm lucky). Is it too much to ask for a method of archiving that will last this long?

Dave (with tongue in cheek!)

[dave walsh]

Well it's probaly not too much to ask Dave... just hard to achieve/guarantee-especially at a domestic level. On the other hand, for everyone that has tapes shedding oxide there is someone reporting no problems! C120 cassettes are supposed to be an anathema, like dp audio tapes or Min Discs, or "ordinary" CDR's. I've had few failures so far and that's over a lot of recording [famous last words]. It's still a lottery, after you get past 78's and vinyl On the positive side they said Stereo wouldn't last [Gerry Wells doesn't believe it did] cassettes would never achieve Hi-Fi quality [1963] and you couldn't possibly broadcast anything on TV that wasn't up to studio quality. I think all this sort of thing is real archeology. Up until a relatively few years ago only the very rich could leave any sort of record of themselves. Who knows what significance your tapes might have? Samuel Pepes thought he was just keeping a diary for a short while. Dave W


By the way, you have now achieved what was just above the average [civillian] male life expectancy at the end of the Second World War-things change!

[woodchips]

Can't see the problem of space, disasters and all the other possibilities. I reckon a fire proof filing cabinet will store about 80 8" tapes per drawer. As for shedding oxide the simple solution, at least to me, is to use old tapes. If they still have their coating on after 20-40 years then they are unlikely to lose it now.

My point was that in 30 years the problem is likely to be how to read, not, if there anything left to read. And the simplest possible technology will win each time. Think books, with minimal effort they do last for a very long time.

Perhaps what I am really saying is that to check an archive is really tedious, and just what are the chances that it will get done. In this case the thread started by saving several dozen (?) tapes of conversation, but that is many hours and will you listen to it each time, or just play it back. With spoken recordings, is it the words or the sound that is wanted? That gives different methods of archiving.

Bob

[SeanStevens]

What has shocked me is why it took three pages of comments before anybody suggested an on-line backup solution.

Again, as mentioned by many Forum members, I would not rely on any one supplier (or media) so I would store the digitised sound files on serveral sites. I certanly would not want to rely solely on plastic covered in chemicals!
For reliability for storing data, a disc array on a server somewhere is always going to be more reliable than any other physical medium.

1. It is futureproof
2. It can be stored 'off site'
3. It is cheap (free in many instances)
4. It can be easily retrieved and re-stored
5. It can be shared
6. Multiple copies can be stored (and versions)

Your relatives may want to listen to the recordings - sending a physical copy is so 1700! You could send a link to the recording on any of the sites you choose. Added benefit is that the recordings may be of interest to historians and a host of others.
You could also publish them on the web if they are not too personal........

SEAN

[Roger13]

Sean.

Point taken but for me it's a matter of trust. I'm a bit of a 'fossil' now but I have always been fascinated by, and keen to keep up with, the latest technology. However, I'm wary of sending my personal info off into cyberspace to be stored on something I cannot physically access, operated by people I don't know and therefore cannot 'trust', and who may well go out of business in the blink of an eye. I agree the latter point can be negated to a large degree by using several parties but even that is no guarantee.

You have aroused my interest though, so I shall investigate the possibilities. It will never be the only archival method I use though. Tape's more fun!

Cheers,
Roger.

[ppppenguin]

A 500GB HDD costs well under £50 and will hold uncompressed audio from 1000+ 0.25" tapes. 2 or 3 of these with duplicate data and at different locations. That's pretty secure. Dead easy to clone the data every now and then. Make it easy and it's more likely to happen.

There is a snag with HDD. You might lose it. It's quite small compared to the 25+ feet of shelving that the tapes were sitting on.

A remote copy out there on the net is yet another backup. I wouldn't trust my data entirely to storage that's "out there". Definitely keep a local copy or 2.

[dave walsh]

These last three posts bring it all into focus. We're not outdated Sean just cautious/worried re even web servers suddenly doing the "impossible" ie failing/disappearing. I think you are probaly right overall and a Max Headroom type future may solve these problems but it's also a matter of trust and control [almost faith] as Roger indicates. Some fossils kept going as living species but as for the rest? This discussion was going on two or three years ago and I was then genuinely intrigued as to how,say, the BBC would be future-proof with it's operational system and archives. I asked about bomb proof HDD and personal RAID array systems [once I found out what they were]. Paul stenning kindly wrote almost a page of explanation but even then, someone suggested preserving the read/write code on a block of granite with a hammer and chisel-now that's what I call time consuming. Cheers, Dave W

[EMI BTR 3]

All of which reminds me of a story I heard some years ago about what happened at A&M Records. In the very early 1980s, thinking digital the wave of the future, they invested in Sony PCM-F1 equipment for the purpose of making digital backups of all the masters they had at that point, roughly 20 years' worth.

Fast forward to the mid-1990s. Someone decided they needed to pull out some of those backup tapes, and listen to them to see what state they were in. It was bad news: Tape after tape had at least one major (unrecoverable) dropout; some tapes refused to play at all. You could count on one hand how many tapes actually played without incident.

Now the good news: A&M had not binned any of their original analogue masters at the time the digital backups were created, so no original materials had been lost.

It was also decided that a new backup/archving programme was to be instituted. This time, all backups were to be made on 1/2", 30 ips analogue tape. I think the tape stock of choice was to be BASF SM911 (if not SM900)....

[Roger13]

Oops, there goes another one. A CDR burned from a cassette compilation, made around 2 years ago. Unplayable!

Happily I still have the original cassettes so I shall do it again, but this time I shall copy the files to HDD. While I'm at it I shall copy the original to Reel/Reel and Minidisc.

What price the digital revolution? Just as well I still have four cassette decks left......

Cheers,
Roger.

[Roger13]

Hi again.

Just a further thought on the blank CDR media thing. Re the above post I popped the disc in to check it's manufacturer and it was rejected by the programme as being 'unsupported'. I assume this is because it was no longer blank (I've since checked this aspect and it would seem to be the case). Which brings me back to my earlier comment: By the time you check it out you've already bought it. If I could check out the failing ones I'd know what to avoid in the future!

Manufacturers need to be taking far more responsibility on this subject. At present they're just fobbing us off with poorly tested/researched media and hoping for the best.

Cheers,
Roger.

[jamesperrett]

As I've probably said before Roger, grab a copy of Plextools from

http://www.plextor-digital.com/index...view.download/

which will tell you who made the disc, even if the disc isn't blank. While Plextools is designed to be used with Plextor drives, the reading functions seem to work with any drive.

James.

[Roger13]

Ok James, I'll give it a look. I've been using a programme called DVD Identifier. Doesn't let the manufacturers off the hook though!

Cheers,
Roger.

[jamesperrett]

DVD Identifier only works for DVD's and Blue Ray discs - there used to be a program called CDR Identifier but the link that I found to it no longer works.

James.

[Roger13]

Aha! Duly noted. Thanks James. You seem to be a bit of a 'whizz' with this stuff. Please stick around to guide us dynosaurs.

Roger.

[Roger13]

Hi again.

I have downloaded, installed, and with James' guidance run this programme and it does give a very thorough look at the disc. Invaluable for helping us to know what to avoid in future! From now on every failed disc gets run through this programme on its way to the bin.

Thanks James.

Roger.

[Ian212121]

All hard drives have a MTBF so even when RAIDed canot be relied upon.It seems that we now have an archival DVD product called M-Disk. It appears to be the digital equivalent of the Neumann lathe in that it physically alters the medium rather than its chemical state. It is relatively inexpensive to use and the disks produced can be read on any DVD player- just need to keep one of those available and working...