[Pasig-discuss] The Archivist's Guide to KryoFlux

[Serbicki, Stefan]

At Electronic Arts, we used Kryoflux boards to recover data from approx. six thousand 3.5” and 5.25” floppies dating back to the 80s and early 90s. We had a ~95% success rate which was quite astounding considering that a good portion of the media had exceeded its theoretical lifetime: 25-30 years.

Getting the data off the disks was only part of the overall project. Our final goal was to obtain “loose” files that could be read or executed. As several of the datasets consisted of backups in various formats, for various platforms, made with obsolete software, considerable work had to be done after achieving a successful Kryoflux extraction. In fact, our work is ongoing. Currently we are focusing on restoring backups made with Fastback 2.0. We have managed to do this successfully for two titles: F-22 Interceptor and LHX Attack Chopper.

The original backups were broken in parts and stored in 5.25” floppies. We used virtual machines to recreate the original environment in which the backups were made. The final output yielded Betas and the game source code. I’ll be happy to write a paper describing the steps we took from beginning to end to recover that data if there is interest.

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Stefan Serbicki
Technical Lead – IP Preservation
Electronic Arts
209 Redwood Shores Parkway
Redwood City, CA 94065

From: Pasig-discuss [mailto:pasig-discuss-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf Of Waugh, Dorothy F.
Sent: Monday, May 01, 2017 6:30 AM
To: pasig-discuss at mail.asis.org
Subject: [Pasig-discuss] The Archivist's Guide to KryoFlux

(With apologies for cross-posting)

An initial draft of The Archivist’s Guide to KryoFlux is now open for comment and review at goo.gl/ZZxxAJ.

The Archivist’s Guide to KryoFlux aims to provide a helpful resource for practitioners working with floppy disks in an archival context. This DRAFT of the Guide will remain open for comments from the digital archives community from May 1 through November 1, 2017. Once revisions have been incorporated, a version of the document will be freely available on GitHub.

Whether you already use a KryoFlux at your institution or are considering purchasing one, please take a look at the guide, put it to the test, and give us your feedback! You can either add your comments to the guide itself or send an email to archivistsguidetokryoflux at gmail.com<mailto:archivistsguidetokryoflux at gmail.com>. Your feedback will be enormously helpful as we go through an additional round of revisions in late 2017—so please, please do get in touch if you have any comments or questions.

With thanks,
The Archivist’s Guide to KryoFlux working group

Dorothy Waugh
Digital Archivist
Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
Emory University
540 Asbury Circle
Atlanta, GA 30322-2870
Tel: (404) 727.2471
Email: dorothy.waugh at emory.edu<mailto:dorothy.waugh at emory.edu>

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