On Thursday, July 27, 2017 at 1:03:41 AM UTC-5, wrote:
On Wed, 26 Jul 2017 21:28:34 -0700 (PDT), trader_4
wrote:

I see no reason to think that if you came across a DVD 100 years from now that there would be no way to get what's there off.

Where would you find a 12" optical drive right now?
That was sold as archival storage just 20-25 years ago.
You would have a hard enough time finding a PC with a 5.25" diskette
drive. I have some IBM 3363 optical disks and I bet there are not 10
running drives in the whole country.
I agree you can copy to new media without losing anything but you
better do it pretty fast while the old drives are still around.


You may have some trouble finding a computer that will read an MFM hard drive as the interface is disappearing from motherboards. I have all sorts of USB adapters in my bag of tech tricks including older computers so I can hookup to the older media. I recall seeing some years ago an interface for hooking old mainframe reel to reel data tape drives to a PC. You could be a mad scientist with that sort of equipment in your computer room. I'd like to see an iPhone interface for that old stuff. ヽ(ヅ)ノ

[8~{} Uncle Tape Monster