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How long does old media last? VHS, cassettes, film, MiniDV and...
Most homes have a box like it somewhere. A jumble of VHS tapes, a few audio cassettes, a reel of Super 8, a stack...
How long do VHS tapes last?
Somewhere in a lot of houses there is a box of VHS tapes in the garage or the loft, a child's first birthday, a...
Keeping your family archive out of the wrong hands
This is the protection half of the family-archive backup series. The main article raised it in a few lines, under the heading “keeping it...
Self-hosting your off-site backup: a NAS at a friend’s house
This is the self-hosting half of Your off-site backup: the options, and what it really costs. That main article lays out three ways to...
Cloud backup for photos and a family archive
Choosing cloud backup for photos and a whole family archive starts here. This is the cloud half of Your off-site backup: the options, and...
Your off-site backup: the options, and what it really costs
This is the companion to Part I, where designing a family backup came down to a few live copies, carried forward onto fresh hardware...
Recording a cassette to your computer (Part V)
This is where you record cassette to computer for real. By now the groundwork is done: in Part III we cleaned the deck and...
Converting MiniDV & Digital8 to digital
Getting MiniDV to digital is the easiest archiving job you'll do. If you've a shoebox of small camcorder cassettes — MiniDV, or the slightly...
Best VHS capture card 2026: which one to actually buy
If you've gone looking for the best VHS capture card 2026 has to offer (the same device captures Video8, Hi8 and S-VHS), you've hit...
Converting reel-to-reel tapes to digital
This guide covers how to convert reel to reel to digital. Reel-to-reel is the audio-tape series' awkward cousin. The principles are almost exactly those...
