Do you have a floppy disk lying around your house?
Whether they’re actually floppy or not, are you depending on those floppy disks to save all your information forever?
Do those floppies house photos? Letters? Your tax records?
Do you keep them in a fire-proof safe? (Have you got one big enough?)
Worse. Are your old manuscripts safely tucked away on those floppies?
I thought mine were safe, and I was smug about saving, until we bought our most recent computer.
I could handle the fact it didn’t have a floppy disk drive since our old computer did and we could always use that computer to access information, right?
Wrong.
I wrote a 300 page, 938+ end noted family history called Pioneer Stock in 2000. I safely copied all the chapters individually onto their own floppy disk. (I’m calling it floppy, but you know it’s square, colorful and made of hard plastic).
One day I wanted to send a copy of my work to a genealogy pal.
None of our computers could read the floppy.
The problem wasn’t simply that I’d written the manuscript in Word Perfect (Oh, how I loved Word Perfect!), but I wrote it on a computer that we bought in 1996.
Somehow, the ability of my most up-to-date, every bell and whistle, computer, could not transcend that old operating system.
8-inch, 5,25-inch, and 3,5-inch floppy disks (Wikipedia)
Unless I wanted to retype the entire manuscript (Good heavens! All those end notes!), I no longer had access to it.
This is no joke folks.
My nuclear engineer bought his first personal computer in 1983. He’s taken them apart, put them back together, and maintained them with his exemplary skills. He couldn’t believe it either.
It turns out that when Windows XP 2000 was released, old floppy disks could be used on the computers, but Windows XP used those floppy disk drives in a new format.
We didn’t worry about this because my same brilliant husband always made sure all our information was loaded on the new computer, every time.
Except once.
Floppy disk format changed for good
And unfortunately that gap in paying attention happened at the same time Windows changed the format on floppy disks.
Who would have thought the floppy disks we burned on our Windows 98 computer, would not be readable on any post-Windows XP operating system?
(If I sound like I know what I’m talking about, rest assured, I’m typing off notes from that aforementioned husband).
Six months ago, I became concerned about my inability to access Pioneer Stock, not to mention my grandmother’s biography The Rose of Mayfield and my grandfather’s biography written to celebrate his 100th birthday in 1990.
My husband tried to open the manuscripts of our fast, impressive brand new computer. Not readable.
We bought a specific floppy disk reader “guaranteed,” to read all floppy disks–except, we discovered upon reading the fine print: none older that Windows XP operating system.
It seems we had stumbled into a growing problem.
The obsolescence of data storage.
A recent article in Smithsonian Magazine highlights and discusses the implications–particularly in regards to photograph storage–here.
My husband was particularly taken by the plea, “if you have an old operating system, please don’t throw it away. At the very least, advertise it on eBay for someone to buy.”
Apparently businesses no longer sell machines that can read those old floppy disks. When I frowned, my husband asked me how I would view a Beta tape. Did I know anyone who had a Beta machine?
(Actually, I do, but you get the point).
He called around to see if he could find someone with a machine.
The one local guy told him,
“People think I have some sort of super computer with a high powered piece of software that can read anything. None exists. All I have is barn filled with old machines. When people bring me a disk, I just try it in all my machines until I find one that can read it. If I don’t have one, I return it and say, ‘good luck.'”
How about an old Windows 98 machine?
My Facebook friends will remember we hunted for weeks for a Windows 98 machine.
No one had one until we remembered an IT guy we knew at a Los Angeles high school.
He asked around and one of his teachers had a Windows 98 operating system computer hidden in a closet. We made a donation to the school and got the machine.
Except we needed to download a driver to be able to read our floppy disks.
My husband prowled the Internet and finally found a website in Australia with the downloadable driver that enabled him to transfer data from the floppy disk to a memory stick (it was an old memory stick at that).
I cannot tell you how relieved we were when Pioneer Stock booted up onto our brand new, extraordinary computer.
We’ve saved it in a number of different formats, now.
Technology is losable
We lose technological abilities frequently.
It hardly seems possible but it resides in the knowledge of the people who manipulate it.
When NASA placed the last Saturn rocket in a museum, the United States lost its ability to build Saturn rockets.
Astronauts traveled to the moon using computers with less calculating abilities than a cell phone, but they got there.
We don’t know how to build a rocket to return to the moon now.
So, make sure you’re backing up your manuscripts and your photos onto something that will last.
Experts don’t believe CDs will be available ten years from now.
The cloud? Hopefully it will stay up there.
Perhaps the real question is, which data storage method will be the next to die?
Floppy disks?
You’re already obsolete.
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This is so true. I’ve kept my writing up-to-date (and I email myself my WIPs as I work on them), but the research I did in structural engineering in the 90s is all on obsolete formats, using dead software.
I still have a 486 and 386 that can read them if they ever become relevant (which I doubt – I’m out of that field).
And you’re right. We could not get to the moon now. The technological knowledge has been lost. This is STUPID.
We have several old computers now taking up space in the garage. Emailing your projects is a great idea and helps you access them from wherever–even if your house burns down. You all have off-site backup, right? Mozy has saved us more times than we care to remember!
Oh I am so happy you found the answer after all that looking! I know what you mean, all that research and knowledge we saved on those old disks, I try not to even think about what I’ve lost. I think it’s quite ironic.
How can we get to the space station but not to the moon?
I’d suggest printing out your Pioneer Stock & maybe keeping it in a safety deposit box. (I’m still very much a 20th century girl.)
Often on Facebook I see friends posting that their phone died or something, & asking friends to send them their phone numbers. I don’t understand why they don’t write them down somewhere.
I have plenty of copies of Pioneer Stock, the issue was my ability to email them to people. If I scanned in the pages, it was too large to send. Problem solved, now, but I wonder about all those photos we’ve never printed! Yikes!
Oh, I see.
Hi, Michelle. I just tagged you in a game of author tag. Playing is simple. All you have to do is answer a few questions about your writing and then pass those questions on to three more authors with blogs. You can read my responses here: http://wp.me/p2ppTK-Og If you don’t want to participate, that’s okay, but I’m hoping you will because I’d love to read your answers.