Re: What coding standard are you using for C?

D Yuniskis wrote:
Paul E Bennett wrote:
David Brown wrote:

Paul Carpenter wrote:

[%X]

In the days before networks and hard disks were common even in small
firms, there was an issue with media - I know that we have programs from
our company's early days that are effectively lost because they are on
old 5 1/4" floppies. You can also get in trouble if you use tape for
your primary archive media. But other than that, media should not be an
issue.
The old server has gone done and this hard drive uses an interface
Interfaces older than IDE were very rare, and if you have to use
something like older SCSI interfaces, you can still get the cards. The
PC world is pretty good at backwards compatibility.

and file system no longer supported by new system(s), is more common a
I'd be impressed if you can think of a file system that is a realistic
candidate for such a situation, and which is not supported by Linux.

[%X]

Wonder how many remember as far back as the Kansas City Tape Standard for Data Recording onto Audio Cassettes. If really pressed I could still cobble

<grin> Or folks who used "VCR data recorders" manufactured
iin somebody's garage...

one of those up. However, if it was really important data to keep, then it should have been subject to a migration policy so that it was appropriately transferred to modern media.

*This* is the key issue here! 20 years ago I spent several weeks
takiing everything that I had archived (floppies of various
sizes, 9 track tape, a slew of other oddball tapes, etc.) and
copied it onto "modern media". Since then, every project
has been added to the pool.

I keep backups on a RAID5 array, additional copies on my
regular workstation (for more recent work or anything that
I want to "have a look back at"), other copies on CD's
and DVD's (these are POOR choices, IMO) and on DLT. The
most vulnerable of these are those on rotating media
as you can lose it *all* in a single ohnosecond! If
possible, find an external drive that has a hardware write
protect switch if you want to go that route...


You /can/ lose data on hard disks fairly quickly, but typically you have to be very unlucky (assuming you make your backups write-protected for normal use). It's a good idea to have two independent copies on different computers, in different locations - you are not going to have hard disk fails, fires, or human error on both systems at once.

The *good* thing about archives is they don't change
often. So, you (i.e., *I*) don't have to repeat this process
very often -- just incrementally update it.

You don't have to repeat it too often, but you /do/ need to check your restoration procedures regularly. This is particularly true if you rely on tape and/or specific backup programs - have you tested the tapes on an independent system (hardware and software)?
.

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