re: Old Home Video Online Storage

quote:

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How are you converting them?

I have no idea how to do this but would very much like to. Perhaps to DVD.

ETA. Sorry if my question sounds hopelessly ignorant. I know next to nothing about this stuff. Appreciate any help anyone can offer.

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I would not convert only to DVD as that medium will suffer the same fate as VHS.

BabySam gave the gist of the actual process, so I will add the basic guidelines for storing data long-term... the 3-2-1 backup strategy.

3 copies of important data, because every storage medium will eventually fail and/or become obsolete, and when that happens to one of them you will still have redundant data until you can restore a 3rd copy again.

2 copies on-site on 2 different devices (preferably on 2 different types of devices).

1 copy off-site (like in "the cloud") so that if disaster strikes on site you have an emergency backup.


And most importantly (and a lot of people don't do this) you must check all copies regularly! "Bit rot" is a thing that can happen to any digital data, 1s become 0s or vice-versa, or data disappears completely. It's important to test reading or restoring data from each of your backups to make sure they are still good (I usually copy the data to a new device/location when I do this). Cloud services typically keep multiple copies of your data themselves and check them against each other regularly to protect against bit-rot.