Your oldest files

[Erik1984]

Most of us have quite a long history in owning a computer (or multitude of them) at home and therefore owning data. Some of those files might have traveled with us from a DOS install to Windows to Ubuntu or many other routes.

I'm just curious how old are the oldest files (preferably you created) on your current installations? Or if you have a good backup discipline: How old are the oldest files you have stored somewhere but are still accessible in case you need them?

I found this script to tell you what the oldest file in a given folder is (it looks in all subfolders too) but maybe there are better scripts for that.

find . -type f -printf "%T@ %P\n" | sort -nr | tail -1 | cut -d' ' -f 2-from: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1501522

So to sumamrize, I'd like to know the following:

1. How old are the oldest files on the systems you currently operate at home?
2. How old are the oldest personal data files (documents, music, video, programming code, savegames etc.) you keep around somewhere?

[cprofitt]

my oldest file still kept on a 720 kB disk is from 9-12-1985. It is a paper I wrote on a Mac.

[Lucradia]

My files are usually all kept on my flash drive from old years past. My oldest file on there would be from 2005, because files retain their creation date in zips / whatnot. Those files are the action-script decompiler, flare06linux. Good 'ol LICENSE.TXT:


Flare, ActionScript decompiler

Copyright (c) 2003-2005 Igor Kogan
All rights reserved.

You may use and redistribute this software free of charge, provided that the following conditions are met:

- Redistribution is solely for non-commercial purposes. You may not sell, rent, or lease the software without the prior express, written permission of the copyright holder.

- The software is distributed unmodified and in its entirety.

- Redistributions must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

This License Agreement is governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Portions of Flare's tag parsing engine are based on Flasm.

Macromedia(r) and Flash(tm) are trademarks or registered trademarks of Macromedia, Inc. in the United States, Germany and other countries.

Macromedia(r) does not sponsor, affiliate, or endorse this product.


As for what files I CREATED, the oldest ones I've had are from 2009 in there.

[ninjaaron]

I don't think I have anything from before I went to college six years ago, and all that stuff is in Open Office format.

I backup all of my academic work on Ubuntu one, so it's in the cloud,both of my machines, and my external HDD.

[whatthefunk]

Ex-girlfriends picture saved in an email folder from 2003. Im sure that if I rummaged through my old closet in my parents house I could find old reports and things I wrote when I was in middle school, early 90's...

[samalex]

On my laptop I probably don't have much that's 2 or 3 years old, but on external storage or floppy I have stuff going back to the early 80's since I still own my first computer, a TRS-80 Color Computer 2, which I got used in 1986 and it was already a few years old at that point with tons of software from the original owner.

So if I had to guess I could probably put my hands on software that's almost 30 years old, though the oldest file I probably created is from 1986.

Sam

[sanderd17]

We had our first 'puter in 2000, maybe there are still some files from that age on our current desktop.

For my laptop, it's only 8 months old, so you'll find no older file on it.

[sffvba[e0rt]

If I had a floppy drive I have some programs I wrote in Pascal for school from 1994 :p


404

[Dr. C]

My oldest file that I could date is the source code for a FORTRAN program I wrote back in June of 1980. It was "uploaded" to a mainframe using IBM punch cards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card and has resided on all sorts of media since then including magnetic tapes, 360 KB 5.25in floppies, and the hard drives of many DOS, Microsoft Windows and GNU/Linux PCs and currently resides on a 1TB SATA hard drive on my main Ubuntu computer after 31 years.

[Eldera]

The oldest files I have created are .doc files of my writings from 2002 when I first bought a computer. Most of them are on DVD discs because I no longer have that computer.

The oldest files on my four current computers are portions of a photo collection started in 2002 (pictures taken by myself). I like to use a picture from time to time to brighten up a letter or memo and like the convenience of having the pictures available on whatever computer I have booted up. I copied the most used portion of the collection to each computer when I got it. The complete set is on a couple of USB sticks.

I am still using some software from 2002. I had made templates for some of my projects. It was simpler to pick up a couple of cheap computers that would still run the software and set up a VirtualBox on my System 76 Pangolin than to learn how to use different software and re-do all my templates.

The older software is fast enough for my comfort, so getting newer software to boost speed is not a priority.

It is all about what works for a person's individual needs.

[drawkcab]

I never had my own computer until 1997 or 1998 so my oldest digital pictures date to about that time. However, I bet that I have some college papers on 3.5 floppies in my parents' basement somewhere that date to 1992.

[Madspyman]

I have files backed up as far back as 1993 I believe, they're on old 3.5 floppies.

[PCaddicted]

I have some music that I bought on the 20th of January 2008...these are my oldest files.:redface:

[cariboo]

I have a couple of 5¼" floppies, from when I went to CDI in 1989, I don't currently have a working 5¼" drive, so I don't know if they are still readable or not.

The CDC Cyber 205 we used for computer based training, still used 8" floppies in those days, and the then new 3½" floppies were just becoming more available, but they were fairly expensive.

[georgemc]

1. How old are the oldest files on the systems you currently operate at home?
2. How old are the oldest personal data files (documents, music, video, programming code, savegames etc.) you keep around somewhere?
Answer to 1: On my main computer files originated some where 1986, been transferred many times over, so original creation dates are lost.
Answer to 2: Boxes with 5 1/4 and 8 inch floppies, tapes, and printouts starting 1976/77 in my garage.

George

OMG I'm old!

[Junosix]

Great question!

My oldest file is a really bad version of roulette I wrote for the Atari ST in FirST BASIC back in 1991, when I was 11! This is assuming the disk still works after all this time.

[JRV]

Making copies of things changed the dates, but I still have a copy of masm.exe from the DOS 1.0 Disk.

Just last week I retrieved a zipped up version of the DOS unshift command I wrote in 1994 because someone I know wants to write it for Linux. It is still on my hard drive.

[ilovelinux33467]

I think my oldest file I still have is one from around 2005 which is a Image Management application I made with Microsoft Access with a bit of VBA when I was just starting to learn programming.

[Copper Bezel]

A whiny teenage journal item beginning August 2001.

So, just barely squeezed in at ten years, there. = )

[keithpeter]

1) http://bodmas.org/fpe/

I've been wasting time on the web for ages.

2) I've got backup zip disks from 1995 or so... I still have the drive so they might work... Alas, I was not able to move a lot of my stuff off the Amstrad green screen wordprocessor or the Acorn Archimedes that I had before.

This is a good thread because backups and data continuity are going to be really important when most people's memories and family photos are on mobile phones and computers. My memories are on paper and film.