[peel] RE: Is it sad...?

[Stuart Brooks]

Although I have kept all of my tapes, including those others have sent me to rip, in case I can do a better ripping job one day or return to the BBC, I still wouldn’t actually go to the trouble and buy thousands of tapes (which is what it would take) to undigitise my Peel archive! I distribute the digital copies far and wide, from PC hard discs to external backups in 2 locations, and to the Mooo/Mediafire for further sharing and data redundancy.

I did get better sonic results from recording shows onto VHS HiFi (as far back as 1988) than I did onto cassettes, but I did this only as a temporary measure to make mixtapes. I found that most of my older tapes then started to get mangled by worn pinch rollers and the helical scanning of the VCRs meant that the audio playback of my older VHS tapes became impossible, so I am glad I didn’t ever decide to use that as a primary store for Peel Shows.

The worst idea is to rely on a single backup source, and yes, if that is a large capacity disk then you can have the information loss equivalent of a bonfire of a thousand tapes in an instant. At least if your sole source is a cassette it can always be opened up and reshelled or stuck back together. Though a few of my old Peel mixtapes went walkabout to friends and never came back....

Stuart

PS can you torture us with what era you lost those unique shows from?

From: ukbongo@... 
Sent: Saturday, February 01, 2014 8:07 PM
To: peel@yahoogroups.com 
Subject: [peel] RE: Is it sad...?

  
Do you know what, Andrew? The latter part of your message is exactly why I am seriously thinking of resorting to tape. I have lost terabytes of information (including unique Peel shows that I had hoped to add to MOO, I hasten to add) because of fragile external hard discs (Western Digital is the principle weak link, I find). I'm fed up being let down by modern technology. Let down by 'progress' in fact. 

DVDs are more secure, yes, and an alternative so I suppose that they are the best digital option. Top of my list, though, are high capacity SD cards and SSDs. I have heard that they retain a 10 year life but the word is that that life span could easily be doubled. No moving parts means no stupid accidents too. Trouble is that they are still too expensive and low in capacity to warrant serious archival attention.

Paul