help! last minute budget requests

[Laura Buchholz]

Hi all, 

I'm trying to pull together a budget request on very short notice. One of my main activities will be migrating data from the floppy disks (3.5in and 5.25in), CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, and other physical media in our collection to more stable storage. 

I'm trying to think of any equipment requests I need to make for that project. Any suggestions or recommendations would be very welcome! What do you use for that process that you just can't live without? Any recommendations on write blockers? I don't want to request a FRED, as I know that's too much money and is probably unnecessary for the level that we're at.

Thanks for any advice!

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Laura Buchholz

Digital Projects Librarian

Library Accessibility Liaison

Reed College Library

503-517-7629

laura.b...@reed.edu

[John Durno]

Hi Laura,

 

With regard to the floppies, it depends a bit on what kinds you’re dealing with, how many, and what your budget is. A Kryoflux controller equipped with 3.5” and a 5.25” flippy drive is the gold standard these days, but it has a couple of drawbacks: it’s a fairly expensive option and really should only be used by experienced technical staff (for example, if you turn on power to the controller and the drive in the wrong order, you can wreck your drive).

 

If you’re /not/ dealing with flippy disks (ie, 5.25” floppies intended by the manufacturer to be single sided, but which have data written on both sides regardless) or Mac 400K or 800K double density 3.5” floppies, you can probably get by with a 3.5” USB floppy drive and a Device Side Data FC5025 USB controller and refurbished 5.25” drive.

 

The Kryoflux has hardware-level write-blocking, and the FC5025 has no write capabilities. You’d need some kind of write blocker for the USB floppy drive, or write blocking to external media can be set in the Windows registry (http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/registry-hack-to-disable-writing-to-usb-drives/) if you need a low-end option.

 

Best,

John

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[amy.w...@gmail.com]

Laura, what's your storage situation? You may need to request budget for space, depending on where the data will go and the volume anticipated.

Amy