Howdy Don,

The operative word there is "try". For me to do that consistently,
I'd probably spend all of my time "moving data" around.

Thankfully, I have a lot less data than you to move around. It's not a
big deal to copy data from a smaller hard drive to a larger hard drive,
other than the hour or three that it might take to transfer the data.

When I started, moving files electronically wasn't practical

Agreed, it was a lot harder to transfer data from cassette tapes or
floppy discs. You had to sit there and baby sit each transfer which
usually took a very long time.

Thankfully, once it's in digital form it just gets faster and faster to
migrate that data to new devices.

Even migrating from hard disks to BIGGER hard disks takes a fair bit
of time!

Yeah, but it's usually something you can start and walk away from.

Or, *paper* records! Even with an ADF, you sit there on pins and
needles wondering if a sheet will scan "crooked"

It is definitely easier to scan papers as they come in than trying to go
back and scan piles of paperwork. I did that recently when I went
through our fire safe, took a couple of days to scan them all.

I've not even tried to scan my old photos. A week scanning ~50 year
old 35mm slides was grueling enough!

Same here. I still have a box of 35mm negatives in our safe deposit box
from our "pre-digital" days. Eventually I want to scan them all but I
know that will be a huge undertaking that I never seem to have time for.

I have probably 100 LPs "new" that I've carefully preserved that are
awaiting a few weeks of my time to transfer to digital media. The
same is true of my cassette library.

I transferred my old LP's to cassette tapes, or simply bought new tapes
to replace them. When CD's came along, I transferred the cassettes to
CD's, or bought new CD's to replace them again. I probably bought several
of my albums two or three times over the years.

Thankfully, once the music was on CD's it was in digital form and I could
finally start copying it losslessly.

Some of my older, less popular, music was sounding rather bad after
multiple lossy transfers. I found digital versions of many of them on
places like iTunes. The rest I just bid farewell to.

SWMBO often buys "lesson tapes" that aren't available on DVD. So, I
keep a VCR to copy those onto digital media.

We got rid of our VHS tapes long ago, but I do have three VCR's still in
storage. Every now and then I get a VHS tape I need to transfer, or a
family member asks me to transfer old videos for them.

A friend has commented that data NEVER gets discarded.

Actually, I do go through my data from time to time and delete out old
files that are no longer needed.

I don't need bank statements for accounts we closed 20+ years ago.

I don't need receipts for stuff I threw away many years ago.

I don't need generic scenery photos from ten years ago if we can't even
tell where they were taken.

And so on... I don't do it all at once, of course, but I'll weed old
stuff out when I discover it. It doesn't make a huge dent in storage
space, but it's easier to find the useful stuff when the useless stuff
isn't cluttering everything up.

Anthony Watson
www.watsondiy.com
www.mountainsoftware.com