Originally Posted by
squiress
I work with seismic data (echo recordings of the subsurface earth). In the 80's a seismic company converted a large number of nine track computer tapes to a new laserdisk WORM drive format (very large disk in plastic square case not unlike a current 3.5 floppy disk but maybe 12"x12" and a precursor to the laserdisk video. The data was later sold to another company during the consolidation phase of the oil and gas industry that occurred in the 90's. In the last two months I attempted to license a portion of that data. The current owner has no hardware and no software to read the data. It has gone from something of excellent value (many hundreds of thousands of dollars) to something good only for the recycle bin.
I think if you archive images on whatever media, you need that plan in place to upgrade to something more current in format or media type over the years. Common sense. (Although I still have data on nine track tapes and know of people who can read them. I also still have 5.25 floppies and can read those as well on machines hold up in my basement.)
I guess I really was looking at the convenience of digital storage compared to the hassle of storing negatives and prints.
Stew
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