Based on other similar recordings I made, I estimate it at 4GiB.
It was a baseband recording of APT+DSB from the NOAA-15 satellite from when it had AVHRR scan motor issues. Not that rare for NOAA-15 (xD), but now that the satellite has been decommissioned, I’ll never record it again.
https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/messages/2025/08/MSG_20250820_1410.html
I do have baseband recordings from good NOAA-15 and 18 passes, but still, this one would have been special.
I’ve posted about it when the issue was occuring: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/3035683
Alternative link: https://lemmy.world/post/4162384 (preferred - our instance is slow - trying without cache a few hours ago, loading main page took 2 minutes and 12 seconds excluding loading of thumbnails)
I’ve just been looking into this again yesterday, and remembered that at some point I had a recording of this partial failure, but it seems I permanently deleted it. The last place it could have been, a HDD from my old laptop, I wiped 2 months ago (incl. full overwrite).
At least I still have the demodulated audio of the APT signal from that partial failure - keep in mind this was still analog - NOAA-15 launched in 1998.
Perhaps not the usual file with sentimental value, like picture or video, but I am a bit weird. I can never record it again. Fuck, I need to start archiving everything.
Now I feel like BBC, erasing TV shows to re-use the tapes.
Or perhaps more aptly (pun intended), NASA re-using Apollo 11 landing imagery tapes.
Oh, guess where I had the 2 remaining recordings. On the cheapest unbranded DVDs I bought on sale in Kaufland at 10 cents / disc, which seem to corrupt after 4 years and can split apart easily with fingers.


You can vacuum seal the drive to negate the humidity concerns.
I did not consider that. I’ll have to revisit my setup to see what I can do to include vacuum seal as an added step.