I gotta get home to check, but I just might be able to beat that by a couple of months... We got a 44 MB SyQuest drive drive at some point in '95 & I was able to start archiving stuff at that point. I moved the SyQuests to zip disks then the zips to CD's in the early aughts, then once drives got big enough, just finally loaded it all on the machine. It's crazy what customers will want after umpteen years!
Hell, I found a .plist file from 2003 on my MBP the other day. Things... accumulate. That file (and I'm sure many like it) somehow survived 4 laptop transfers & the PPC to Intel transition.
I've somehow managed to keep my iTunes library intact from the day I grudgingly switched from WinAmp in 2004. Track addition dates, play counts, everything. It's a weird feeling.
can't wait until I can get home and see if my machine has kept the original file creation dates on some image files that I know are there. I hope to be able to reach back to 1997 at least.
I have t-shirt client files back to Feb. 1994 it turns out, but it's all schools & local businesses & stuff -- we had just gotten Aldus Freehand & were pretty much only using it for typesetting. I found a couple of TypeStyler documents called "Do Not Remove!" from 1994, but nothing will open them any more. :-( The oldest thing I created for fun appears to only date back to 2000.
I have some MacPaint files from 1988-1990, I'll see if I can dredge them up this weekend. Used to have some MacPaint work from 1985, possibly earlier, but I'm pretty sure those have been long lost.
My current computer only has files back to 2001 or so. I can't read any zip disks with my '90s web work, and i don't think my LCII will boot up any more. TBH the only thing i really archive carefully are pictures of my kids (starting in 2001).
Yep, abandoned burnable media as soon as hard drives got big enough. Current backup scheme - OS & apps to bootable FW drive via carbon copy cloner, close at hand, updated by script weekly. Separate Time Machine with everything on it, also on the desk. 2 additional drives with everything cloned, one in drawer unplugged, one in safety deposit box, rotated approximately monthly.
Figure this indemnifies me against disk corruption, time machine corruption, lightning strike, fire, burglary.
I gotta get home to check, but I just might be able to beat that by a couple of months... We got a 44 MB SyQuest drive drive at some point in '95 & I was able to start archiving stuff at that point. I moved the SyQuests to zip disks then the zips to CD's in the early aughts, then once drives got big enough, just finally loaded it all on the machine. It's crazy what customers will want after umpteen years!
Figure this indemnifies me against disk corruption, time machine corruption, lightning strike, fire, burglary.
Overkill maybe, but.