So what do they use, (multiple) flash drives, hard disks? Surely not the old standby mag tape?
I recall an astronomer doing VLBI work a few decades ago making the comment, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a monthly station wagon full of mag tape."
So what do they use, (multiple) flash drives?
Gromaticus, post: 331428, member: 597 wrote: Great! I'm glad it worked out.
I remember saving my jobs on individual floppy disks, thinking that in 20 or 30 years I could put the floppy in this here..uhh..in the...dammit! There's no more floppy drives!
I upgraded to a computer that would not support an internal 3.5" diskette years ago. At the same time I got a usb diskette drive and have transferred the old data to larger hard drives. These hard drives are backed up on at least twice a week schedule.
I know a fellow that takes that to the next step with three removable hard drives. Backup is continuous to the most current copy, the previous copy (3 days to 1 week old) is stored in a local bank safe deposit vault. The one to two week old copy is stored in an on site (his office) fire proof file cabinet. On Friday or Saturday the current copy is updated, removed and replaced with the two week old. The backup software checks for differences and updates the two week old to current. The removed drive is taken to the bank exchanged with the one stored there which is returned to the office file cabinet.
He has had one major hard drive failure in the last ten years. Removed and replaced the hard drive, restored the most current backup and lost less than a day in the process.
Bill93, post: 331776, member: 87 wrote: So what do they use, (multiple) flash drives, hard disks? Surely not the old standby mag tape?
I recall an astronomer doing VLBI work a few decades ago making the comment, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a monthly station wagon full of mag tape."
I meant "magnetic" not "optical" in my earlier post.
Solid State Drives. One of the projects they were working on was transferring data that had never been analyzed or viewed from 1960's-era space missions from 64-track tape drives to SSDs. At that time there were only two living persons capable of repairing 64-track tape drives. Both were essentially retired, both were handsomely paid for their services. One had moved to another country to avoid tax consequences.
