I would like to have some original software shipped to me but I am afraid that it might become damaged in shipping.
The software are the original boot disks and disk tools that came with my first Mac SE and some miscellaneous original goodies. They are ~25 year old 400K low coercivity diskettes which is the reason for my concern. I don't know the strength of the remaining data and don't want it destroyed by security scans as it crosses national borders.
I am afraid of the possibility of magnetic fields further demagnetizing the already weak data on the disk. I have no idea how to recover the data if it is lost. I don't have 400k drives to recreate the disks.
I want to be able to use them on the elderly computer. They were matched for the first release of the model, became lost in a move long ago, and recently relocated.
How best to protect my treasures in transit. What precautions should I ask the borrower to take for returning my original diskettes to me?
Update: The disks are 3.25" (beige plastic hard shell case) 400K disks with no second notch (that indicate a high density, high coercivity diskette). The 400K drives do not recognize the 800K disks I have tried in the drive. It wants its boot disks to access the internal 10 MB disk. š
Best Answer
Any time I shipped magnetic media, I used the anti-static bags that electronic components came in. Granted, when you have access to an IT department, they are easily available; we would save them for reuse. I still do, but my stash isnāt as plentiful as it used to be.
However, you can get reusable zip poly anti static pouches. They will provide shielding from low level EM fields and are transparent enough that if your package is opened for inspection, the contents are easily identifiable. Iāve never had any issue with data loss using this method whether shipping in-country or internationally.
You didnāt mention which format the diskettes were; if they were 3.5ā or 5.25ā or even the large IBM 8ā but typically you could copy the disks so long as the drive was capable of writing it. For instance, the 3.5ā 1.44MB FDD drive could easily handle the 720K disks. We had a ācopyboardā in an IBM AT that would duplicate anything including copy protected disks for Apple. It didnāt even matter if the OS could read it so long as the drive could.
Along that note, I just recently ran across some Gateway 2000 MS-DOS 6.22 setup disks in a storage box that werenāt exactly put away with the greatest of care (about 25 years old). I was able to image them and install MS-DOS onto a Virtual Box VM with no issue. Iād bet your disks are still readable. If at all possible, Iād make an image for safe keeping (I can walk you through it, but itās technically a different question). Oh, and those DOS disks were imaged using a Mac!