mhoyeAug 16, 2023

A note about old disc media that you might find valuable: there's a linux tool called "setcd" you can use to adjust the spin speed of your CDRom drive.

This is useful if you're recovering data from dodgy old discs; sometimes they become brittle over time and will burst at high rotation speeds. If you're using ten or twenty year old media, use "setcd -x 1" to dial the device down to as slow as it will go, then take an .iso image of the disk, loopmount it and work from that.

Show threadRichard "RichiH" HartmannAug 16, 2023
@mhoye any idea what drive to buy before trying to archive, or tossing, the CDs?
Show threadmhoye
@RichiH Backblaze publishes fleet reports of drive failures every year, and my approach is pretty simple, it’s “buy two of whatever Backblaze says will live the longest that’s still for sale”.
Aug 16, 2023 at 9:53pmWeb
Show threadDreaming of dad jazz.Aug 17, 2023
@mhoye @RichiH Or you can just do what I do and archive to B2 with something like restic
Show threadRichard "RichiH" HartmannAug 17, 2023
@mhoye yes, that's what I do for HDDs as well. I meant optical drives -- it seems impossible to get reliable info...
Show threadmhoyeAug 17, 2023
@RichiH Yeah, that entire space has been commodified into quasi-irrelevance now. "Use an internal drive in an old computer" is pretty much the entirety of my thought process there.