Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!hc!lanl!unm-la!unmvax!nmtsun!caasnsr From: caasnsr@nmtsun.nmt.edu (Clifford Adams) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: X-Ray detectors and Tapes Summary: Floppies Destroyed. Keywords: storage media damage x-ray Message-ID: <758@nmtsun.nmt.edu> Date: 16 Jul 88 20:07:20 GMT References: <588@bnlux0.bnl.gov> <1925@cuuxb.ATT.COM> Reply-To: caasnsr@nmtsun.nmt.edu (Clifford Adams) Distribution: na Organization: New Mexico Tech, Socorro NM Lines: 24 In article <1925@cuuxb.ATT.COM> dlm@cuuxb.UUCP (Dennis L. Mumaugh) writes: >In a time long ago ... NBS did a study and a report on the >effects of magnetic fields on tapes. A short summary ... [summary on X-rays and Mag tapes deleted --caa] >... It [also] didn't address floppy disks. From experience... I was in California, and copied some floppy disks for my Commodore 64 computer. On a flight to Colorado Springs, the disks were run through the X-ray machine used for carry-on luggage. Most of the information survived. Less than 1 bit per 256 bytes was changed. Unfortunately, this destroyed almost all programs on the five disks. The disks for the Commodore 64 store 174K of information per side (348K/disk). Think of the damage to high-density formats that may store a megabyte or more per floppy disk. >=Dennis L. Mumaugh > Lisle, IL ...!{att,lll-crg}!cuuxb!dlm OR cuuxb!dlm@arpa.att.com -- Clifford A. Adams --- "I understand only inasmuch as I become." ForthLisp Project Programmer (Goal: LISP interpreter in Forth) caasnsr@nmtsun.nmt.edu ...cmcl2!lanl!unm-la!unmvax!nmtsun!caasnsr