Non-current Portable Magnetic Media
Materials saved to floppy disks, tape, portable hard disks or other numerous magnetic storage devices where the media is out of warranty and reader devices may no longer be supported or integrated easily into hardware infrastructure: typically, more than five years old.
Examples
Floppy disks; tape; certain kinds of portable hard disks, zip drives.
Hazards
Poor storage; inability to access readers; no replication; encryption; aggressive compression; uncertainty over IPR or the presence of orphaned works.
Hardware/MediaMitigations
Active management; dependable access to readers; strong documentation; documentation independent from the media.
Bit List History
Added to list: 2019Last Review
The 2019 Jury introduced this entry to ensure that the range of media storage is properly assessed and presented. Portable magnetic media is ubiquitous but is fragile not just to physical wear and tear but also to magnetic interference and bit-rot. The substrates of the disks can prove unstable, and in some cases, proprietary reader technology means that the disk becomes obsolete before it degrades. Storage at scale also means the percentage likelihood of failure increases. The 2021 Jury and 2022 Taskforce agreed with the entry’s assigned risk classification with no noted trend towards increased or reduced risk.
The 2023 Council agreed with the risk classification of Critically Endangered with the overall risks remaining on the same basis as before (‘No change’ to trend). Additionally, a new entry ‘Non-current Rare Portable Magnetic Media’ was created as a split, related standalone entry to highlight the increased risk.
The 2024 Interim Review Council agreed These risks remain on the same basis as before, with no significant trend towards even greater or reduced risk (‘No change’ to trend).
Additional Information
There is no ‘active management’ of data found on these media items. The data should be copied off of the media and into a digital preservation system that allows for active management. Data found on these media should be considered a backup, at best.
We know what to do with this type of material, it is the scale that makes it a problem.
There is really no excuse for using floppy disks for storage these days. Tape is a different proposition since it allows high-density back up offline and nearline. But there are challenges with the backward compatibility of popular and even relatively recent LTO versions.
Case Studies & Examples
- The Magnetic Tape Alert Project, Information for All Programme (IFAP) of UNESCO, in cooperation with IASA, the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives, to alert stakeholders of the imminent threat of losing access to their audiovisual documents. The project included a survey of existing audiovisual documents on magnetic tape not yet digitally preserved. See The Magnetic Tape Alert Project, Pace, A. (2020), IASA & UNESCO Information for All Programme [accessed at 2023-10-24].
- 8″ Disk Recovery: Kryoflux and Catweasel, de Vries, D. (2015), OPF Blog [accessed at 2023-10-24].
- The British Library’s Flashback Project, a proof-of-concept that explored the practical challenges of preserving digital content stored on physical media (magnetic and optical disks) using a sample of content from hybrid collection items dating from between 1980 and 2010. See The Flashback Project: Rescuing disk-based content from the 1980s to the present day, Pennock, M., May, P., Day, M., Davies, K. and Whibley, S. (2016), 11th International Digital Curation Conference, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 22-25 February.