Living Legacies: Recovering Data from 5¼” Floppy Disk Storage Media for the Commodore 64
Shaun M. Trujillo · Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) · 2019
In an attempt to investigate the challenges of recovering and preserving digital objects from legacy systems this case study focuses on working with a particular storage medium and computing hardware. This study illustrates the physical and representational challenges that result from recovering data created with a Commodore 64 computer and stored on 5¼" floppy disks. A system for classifying types of digital objects found in the sample of recovered data was developed. This study contributes to the discourse of collecting institutions engaged in digital preservation and provides examples of ad hoc solutions for working through the challenges of recovering meaningful information from legacy systems. The issues that come to light in this study can be extended beyond the context of the Commodore 64 to include other types of digital resources and computing artifacts that will potentially cross the archival threshold in the near future.