Data Migration

One of the newest services at George Blood LP is Data Migration. With audio, video, and film preservation covered, it seemed only natural to seamlessly integrate Data Migration under our roof. Though the service is new, the staff is highly experienced with the acquisition of Muller Media Conversion, bringing with it 40 years of of data migration experience.

At George Blood LP one of our chief assets is our ability to handle difficult and unique file formats. Data Migration helps to keep this information accurate and accessible to our clients and their patrons. Whether you need a simple disc image, a directory dump, file conversion, reverse engineering of old databases, or conformance to BitCurator workflows, whether your goal is simple preservation or eDiscovery, we have the tools and staff to recover the bits.

Data Preservation and Rescue

Tape Conversion - 9-track reels (3420), 3480, 3490, 3490E, 3570, 3590, 9840, DLT, SDLT, AIT, LTO, 4mm, 8mm, Travan, QIC (full and mini) are among the many physical media we support. Logical structures include all flavors of IBM and ANSI standard files, including fixed and variable length records, spanned records and other variations that are troublesome to other services. We also convert many proprietary legacy formats, including Wang, DEC, Data General, Unix, PDP-11, Honeywell and many others.

Disk Conversion - SyQuest, Bernoulli, ZIP, JAZ, Super-Disk, CD, DVD, WORM, Optical (3½" and 5¼") and diskettes (8", 5¼" and 3½" ) in a dizzying variety of logical and physical formats.

Mainframe File and Tape Conversion

  • Capture legacy tapes with 100% accuracy to "virtual tapes" on hard disk or DVD.
  • Read fixed, variable and spanned records from IBM, ANSI or unlabelled tapes.
  • Create detailed directory listings of such tapes including file name, record size, record type, etc.
  • Dump tape blocks in hexadecimal or octal with ASCII or EBCDIC character interpretation.
  • Convert files from tape (or tape-images) to PC files, within folders automatically named by volume ID.
  • "Stacking": Copy tapes (or tape-images) to new tapes, while automatically creating appropriate IBM or ANSI label-records to take advantage of the higher capacity.
  • Parse records containing EBCDIC, packed decimal, integer, float, etc using our GenScript/RunScript software.

Consulting and Programming

Many of the nation's most prestigious law firms, universities, corporations and government agencies have relied on George Blood to create special software for recovery and conversion of digital documents, databases, scientific research, document management migrations, federal electronic records preservation and many other needs. Our programmers and system designers are expert in C, C++, C#, VB, ".NET" framework and a number of assembler languages.

Of course, our staff is particularly strong in deciphering arcane data and media formats. That's one reason why the National Archives and Record Administration hired George Blood to develop the Archival Preservation System software NARA uses to process and preserve data coming in from all over the federal government. (George Blood owns the commercial development rights to this package.) On the other hand, our skill set is broad enough to handle projects in other areas as well. Just a few examples of our wide range of experience follow:

E-Discovery

Meeting enforcement and litigation team needs since 1978, George Blood has offered consulting, programming and conversion services to federal, state, local agencies for litigation and e-Discovery.

Software Tools

DPS™ (Data Preservation System): In 1992, we began an exclusive contractual relationship with the National Archives. The product of that effort was a complex yet robust and steadily improving "APS" (Archival Preservation System) which is used by the federal government to process and preserve permanent records from all federal agencies. We have also produced a commercial version of the package, dubbed "DPS". See our "DPS News" page for some examples of how the product has been used for and by a number of prestigious clients. The many capabilities of DPS™ have been employed in our service bureau, in pursuit of migrations, litigation/evidence processing and compliance (long-term data preservation).

Fast 'n Easy™: These PC-based programs are used to convert from a wide variety of legacy disk and tape file formats such as Wang VS (WP, WP+, Database, Image), DEC PDP-11 and VAX Word-11, IBM ATMS/ATS, IBM DCF/Script, ATEX, Data General CEO, WordMarc and WordPerfect, Texas Instruments, FourPhase, Honeywell and many others.

These are truly "industrial strength" applications. The Wang conversion and migration marketplace has been very active for us, so much of the material contained on the website is written with Wang environments in mind.

GenScript/RunScript™: GenScript and RunScript are programs used to easily develop and use record-translation "scripts" which can translate EBCDIC, packed-decimal, integer, floating-point and other types of specially-formatted fields.

Custom Software:

  • Electronic Evidence/Freedom-Of-Information Scenarios
  • Acrobat PDF creation from a wide variety of sources
  • Database migrations
  • Document management migrations
  • Almost any application that gets your data from "here" to "there".
  • Consulting Services
  • Many of the nation's most prestigious law firms, corporations and government agencies have relied on George Blood to create special software for document conversion, database conversion, document management migration, federal electronic records preservation and many other needs.