On 6 May 98, at 20:51, our friend [log in to unmask] wrote:

> I have lived for a decade and a half in Micronesia, on tropically humid and
> hot, and dusty islands.  During these years, I have often wondered how best
> to take care of floppies.

We have the same problem in Belize, and I would love to hear an
authoritative answer to your questions.  I suspect the fungi or
whatever that kills the floppies may be related to the gunk that
causes us to have to clean mice at least once a week, and builds up
on my car's (plastic) steering wheel.

The best thing we've found is to buy lots of Hefty One-Zip quart-size
bags (there are a couple of stores in Belize that carry them) and put
just a few floppies in each one.  They are fairly heavy plastic bags
with a convient seal, and seem to extend the lifespan to at least
double anything else we've tried.

Curiously, we have (so far) not experienced any problem with Zip
disks ... perhaps the media is of a different plastic, not so
appetizing to the micro-critters?

We try to protect cassette tapes and video tapes the same way,
because they also seem to be susceptable to the stuff.  I do NOT
recommend using tape for data backup here ... CD-R is the way to go!

Hope you (we) get some other responses.



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Jan Wilson                 /       [log in to unmask]
Corozal Community College / Corozal Junior College
Corozal Town, Belize     /         Central America
Visit our Corozal page  /   http://www.corozal.com
PGP key at keyservers  /  or at [log in to unmask]
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