If anyone is looking for an external optical drive that can handle blu-ray and M-DISC, then this is the model I endorse: https://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Computer/Computer+Drives/BDR-XD08UMB... I've been able to read all kinds of blu-rays with it, including UHD. It also uses USB-C which saves so much trouble finding the right cable. And no drivers necessary for running on Linux! Optical media is increasingly uncommon these days, so I can understand why almost no new computers come with them, however external optical drives still have their uses. I've definitely gotten a lot of use with mine with all of the movies I check out from the library! - Josh On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 5:48 PM John Stoffel via WLUG <wlug@lists.wlug.org> wrote:
"Jon" == Jon \"maddog\" Hall via WLUG <wlug@lists.wlug.org> writes:
In 1975 I was working for Aetna Life and Casualty in Hartford, Connecticut. At that time Aetna was the largest multiline Insurance company and also the largest commercial user of IBM equipment in the "Free World" (which goes to show that with enough qualifiers you can be the best of anything).
In any case we had 500,000 12" magnetic tape drives on site, with another 100,000 in a salt mine for "long term storage". For those tapes the "retention time" was 9999 years.
Some of the older tapes were marked as seven-track, 128 bits-per-inch.
I asked my boss about trying to read those tapes, and he assured me there was a seven-track tape drive stored along with the tapes, wrapped in bubble wrap.
"Yes", I said, "but where is the computer that can attach to that tape drive, and the OS that can drive the tape controller, and the operator that can boot and run that operating system?"
My boss put his finger to his lips and said 'Shhhhhhhhh".
I'm in the same boat with 43,000+ pieces of media offsite at Iron Mountain in a mix of DAT, DLT 7k, SDLT320 and LTO6 media that might need to be restored.
And let's ignore the 8mm tapes that sat in a couple of boxes for 15+ yeats without anyone touching them ... even after I scrapped the tape library to read them.
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