Before anything else
The most important rule is the hardest to follow: do not try to see what is on it yet. Every read wears a fragile medium a little, and a failing drive or a sticky tape can destroy itself, and everything on it, on the first attempt. Much of the damage Lazarus sees on arrival was done in the week before, by someone trying to help.
- Do not power on a hard drive that clicks, grinds, or has been dropped, wet or in a fire.
- Do not play an old data, audio or video tape until it has been assessed. Tapes that squeal or leave residue are shedding their oxide.
- Do not run disk repair or “scan and fix” utilities. They write to the disk, and their guesses are permanent.
- Do not clean disks or discs with solvents, and never wipe a disc in circles.
Handling
Hold floppy disks by their edges, and optical discs by the rim and the centre hole. Keep fingers off any exposed surface. If a floppy disk or cartridge has a write-protect tab, would you kindly slide it to the protected position before it goes anywhere near a drive. It costs nothing, and it makes it impossible to overwrite the disk by accident.
Keep media in the order you found them, together with labels, sleeves, boxes, manuals and notes. An inscription on a sleeve is often the only record of what a disk holds, who made it and when.
Storage until it can be read
- Cool, dry and steady. Around 15 to 20 °C and 30 to 50 percent humidity. Swings do more harm than any one temperature.
- Upright, like books on a shelf, rather than stacked.
- Away from magnets, including loudspeakers, motors and the backs of old televisions.
- Out of the light. Sunlight fades recordable discs and erases EPROMs through their windows.
- Not in attics, basements, garages or cars, where temperature and damp change with the seasons.
Signs of trouble
| What you see or hear | What it usually means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| White or grey spots on a disk surface | Mould | Seal it in a bag, away from other media, and ask for help. Do not try to read it. |
| Squealing, sticking or residue from a tape | Binder breakdown, known as sticky-shed | Stop at once. The tape can be treated, but only before it is played. |
| Clicking or grinding from a hard drive | Head or motor failure | Power it off and leave it off. Each attempt can scratch the platters. |
| Bronze or brown patches on a pressed CD | Disc rot | Copy it soon, in more than one drive. |
| Blotchy or faded dye on a recordable disc | Dye failure | Copy it as soon as possible. Recordable discs fail long before pressed ones. |
| A swollen battery in a device | Battery failure | Remove the battery if it can be done safely. Do not charge it. |
| A rattle inside a drive or cartridge | Loose or broken parts | Do not power it. Keep it level. |
Write it down
Before you hand anything over, note where it was found, who it belonged to and anything you know about what is on it. Provenance is half the value of a recovered work, and it is much easier to record now than to reconstruct later. Describing what you keep explains what archivists look for.
When to ask for help
If something matters and shows any of the signs above, stop and ask a specialist. Many of the partner archives run recovery benches of their own, or can tell you who does near you. A recovery done once, carefully, almost always does better than one attempted many times.