Saving Old Media for the Digital Age
If you’ve done any spring cleaning this spring or at any other point, you’re probably finding piles and piles of scrapbooks, photo albums, cassette tapes, videotapes, and any other physical forms of media that contain photos, music, and video near and dear to you and your family.
If you’re looking to keep the memories but cut back on the clutter, consider converting these old media into a digital format, especially as ways to use these formats become obsolete.
Centers Health Care has a look at what you need to do this project yourself or how to have the pros handle it.
- Printed Photos
Converting printed photos into digital versions is one of the easiest projects to do. All you need is a scanner to create image files that can be stored on your computer, CDs, or an external hard drive.
- LPs
With record players becoming popular again, any new ones will hook up to a computer via a USB cable, where you can then record and save the audio files.
- Cassette Tapes
These can be converted the same way as LPs are, but you’ll have to find a cassette player that has a USB cable.
- VHS Tapes
Hopefully you have a VCR hanging around in the attic! VCRs can run you over $200 these days, but consider something like Legacybox digitizing service that comes with software to install on your computer to help with the process.
- DVD
If your computer has a DVD drive, this will be an easier project, as all you’ll need is video software to extract the video. If you don’t have a DVD drive on your computer, you can either purchase an external one or go with the Legacybox option.
- Floppy Disks
If you have files on old floppy discs that are worth accessing, you’ll have to either have an old computer with a disc drive or purchase an external floppy disc reader. Once you have that, connect it to your computer via a USB cable, and it will be easy to move the files from the disc to your hard drive.
Create Copies
There are professional services that will handle the digitizing of any of these physical formats, but whether you do it yourself or pay to have someone else do it, be sure to have two copies made in case one becomes corrupted or lost.