Flipping the infamous early 1990s anti-piracy campaign messaging on its head, the Future Nostalgia Project is asking retro hoarders to Copy That Floppy! Backed by the Cambridge University Library and supported by the Digital Preservation Coalition, the project went online late last year. The project includes an extensive, indexed how-to guide to preserving data currently on your dusty old floppy collection. It covers a plethora of removable media from 8- and 5.25-inch floppies to the iconic 3.5-inch ‘save icon’ diskettes. I’ve been archiving my own very poorly labeled collection of diskettes before bit rot gets them, and while the necessary hardware remains affordable.
The published guide focuses mostly on saving the material stored on the old removable media. Rewriting the disks to new media and/or accessing the old data that was squirreled within is beyond the scope of the still extensive guide. However, there are links provided to further guides and documentation that cover those subsequent steps.
