Greetings!

On 5/6/2016 7:34 AM, HerHusband wrote:
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.

Wait until you have to "fsck" a 3T disk. Or, "scandisk"! :

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.

I was referring to the effort of transferring a "project" to a client
(located in another city/state). Nowadays, I can email huge attachments.
Or, put a file on an HTTP/FTP server and let them grab it "directly"...
at very high transfer rates! Years ago, it was impractical to move
many megabytes using modems (and paying for phone calls). Most of
the clients I dealt with would look at me blankly if I suggested they
set up a UUCP node (so we could benefit from the transport of others)

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.

In the past, the problem has always been one of "organizing" the data.
Which drive has which files on it? (when the drives are sitting on a
shelf). With my new database approach, I don't have to worry about that!
Let *it* keep track of what's where so I can browse through the database
instead of having to drag out one drive after another, hoping to stumble
on what I'm looking for! Previously, I'd have to "ls -alR" each disk
and keep those "lists" on a live machine to scan sequentially in the hope
of a file/directory name ringing a bell.

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 have *big* boxes of paper documents. E.g., my MULTICS collection is
several cubic feet. I'd need a couple of spare scanners as I'm sure
I'd "burn out" the ones I have! Esp the ADF's!

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.

If they aren't "too old", *pay* someone to do it for you (a service
bureau). In my case, they were really old and even the emulsions were
in sad shape. So, a fair bit of TLC was required to get a useful image.

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.

I did that for my "mainstream" LP's. It was easier just to buy them over
again. These, however, don't exist in CD form. So, I either listen to
them AS vinyl or take the time to do the transfer myself. With a fairly
good turntable/cartridge and 24b digital, you can "read once" and do all
the fixup and downsampling to 16b in post. But, its still many hours to
make a usable "CD" from each LP.

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

But never with any greater precision than your original choice of digitizing.

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.

I have one located adjacent to my multimedia workstation. I can digitize
a tape and then handle the post-processing on that workstation to create
the final "DVD", MP4, etc.

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 need all supporting information for my business, "just in case".
The amount of space I'll save in a file cabinet is nothing compared
to the hassle I could face trying to document a KEOGH contribution
or verify my adoption of specific new terms of the "plan". We dont
need receipts for many of the household items as credit card statements,
checks and/or the records of the folks who sold it to us are usually
enough (for warranty repair/replace).

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

Thankfully, I'm not big on photos! I only use them to "document
things": this is a photo of the PCB for project X; here is a photo
of the roof repair from 2001 (helpful if I notice a part of the roof
developing a REPEAT problem); this is what water coming off the back
of the house looks like in a Monsoon; etc.

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.

I have a lot of research software/publications in my archive. In some
cases, I have the "only" copy (that *I* know of -- google won't find
anything; someone LIKE me may have a copy squirreled away) of many of
these things. Usually, I have the entire RCS/SCCS/CVS repository on
hand so I can actually recreate the project at any point in its
existence to see *what* was done to effect a particular change recorded
in the log.

Plus, the same with each of *my* projects (hardware and software).

And, of course, all of the tools I've purchased over the years.

If I was starting over, I'd build virtual machines for each
"development environment" and just archive those in their entirety.
And, "just say no" to oddball hardware that places constraints on WHERE
those VM's can be run!

(Unfortunately, historically, this has never been possible; an ICE
from vendor A might require a parallel port to communicate with my
host while one from vendor B might use a serial port and vendor C
a proprietaray "add in ISA card". Given that I'm *building* things,
I can't just watch my code execute on a CRT and claim that it works.
I need to watch the motor spin and the mechanism move -- and verify
that it stops when it reaches the limit of its travel, etc. Or, verify
the number of coins dispensed from a hopper are appropriate for the
"payout". Or, determine the smallest volume of a blood sample that I
can reliably detect. etc. So, hardware is ALWAYS involved in my
projects...)