Donnerstag, Dezember 06, 2007

get rid of floppy and zip backup

Searching for some old data I realized it was only stored on a floppy backup. As only may old computers still have a floppy drive, this is the last chance to read and save the data. The other thing to keep in mind is that the magnetic field on the floppy will decrease over time. Not sure after how many years a floppy will still be readable. And if you think about the HD sizes today, you will not notice the data you copy from your floppies.

The same is true for the zip media I have. As I have much less zips as floppies and the drive is external I decided to get rid of this first.


  • copy the data with rsync of each zip into a separate directory

  • backup all this data onto a second HD

  • calculate the md5sum of the files and remove the double ones



There is no need to spend (loose) some time and sort the data. There was no need to access the data for some years, there will be no need in the future. And if, the new index and search tools like beagle will find the data anyway - and quicker as I am, no matter how the data is sorted.

Why keep the data at all, if I think I will not need it in the future. Nostalgic, like the stuff from university. Reference, some mails, letters, etc. And as I said the data doesn't take any space. We still talk about Mega Bytes in a time where HD's start to be measured in Terra Bytes. Way spent time to reduce the space used for the old data from 0.1% to 0.05%?

Keine Kommentare: