Im torn. On one hand yes everything is available digitally. On the other I like having hard copies and not thinking about backing up 3 hard drives and random hard drive failure and managing an even larger library on a computer…its nice just to have the media exist. And what happens when our ability to own media disappears (which looks to be a very real possibility).
They do take up space. I may keep the ones I really like and get rid of others.
I easily have over 300. Along with dvds, but im keeping those.
No. If they are meaningful to you, keep them. If you’re worried about the data failure of them, just watch them once every 10 years and it should renew the magnetic stuff on them.
I work in a place with a lot of old technology and the general consensus is that magnetic media needs to go through the motions every 10 years to stay healthy.
but we have had success accessing 25+ year old media. so there’s no scientific line about how long that stuff should survive.
I do subscribe to the 10 year access rule because not all media was created equal.
VHS doesn’t work like that. It’s not digital. It doesn’t rewrite on a read. Magnetic hard drives and tapes don’t rewrite on a read either.
You need to copy them to renew and VHS is analog so every copy is worse.