"Thomas Lunde" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Just recently, I was reading
>a posting about all the early computer tapes, discs, hard drives, etc that
>we are losing for two reasons, one the storage devices are deteriotating and
>two we are losing the disk drives, operating systems, formats, in which this
>knowledge was stored.
I work in a situation where this problem is faced constantly. Some here
may remember an old post where I described filling an 8x8x20 foot
dumpster with obsolete DEC PDP 11 computers and tape drives. We
recently retired the last machine on site capable of reading the data
tapes collected using this old technology. At one time we were storing
thousands of tapes from hundreds of experiments, occupying walls
of storage racks and atco-type trailers full of boxes. Experimenters
were given a few years to migrate their old data to 8mm video tape,
which is what we use now for long term storage. Each little video
tape is capable of storing the data from several boxes worth of the
old reel to reel tape. When the last reel tape reader was retired,
all the old data tapes were trucked to the dump. We now appear to
be moving towards a writable cd technology (things always start
slowly as people are reluctant to spend the money and learn the
new technology), and in ten years we'll probably be trashing a
great whack of 8mm data tapes. However, the amount of physical material
will be far less than that incorporated in the old reel tapes.
Each time the data is migrated, the experimenters have to decide
what data they feel is worth spending the time to copy, and of
course, a lot is discarded. Does this matter? It's hard to say.
One could reasonably argue that there is no earthly reason why
anyone would ever want to look at old particle physics data tapes
again. On the other hand, we still have the log books of experiments
from two hundred years ago, and people still like to go back and
look at some of the notable ones, those from significant experiments,
or famous experimenters. But the people who do this are rarely
doing it to check the data, rather they are historians of science
or commentators on scientific method. Future counterparts would
find very little of value on data tapes. It is always possible that
someone might find a reason to search the vast quantities of old
data tapes for rare abnormal events discarded by the original
researchers as suspect, but one wonders whether a lot of data
is being preserved chiefly because it is the only remaining tangible
connection to the great amounts of time energy and money expended
on these experiments, other than the papers which resulted.
-Pete Vincent
