We found a couple old 3/4″ video tapes at work that needed converting to something a bit more.. modern. Fortunately, we have a big ‘ol 3/4″ player which someone was just going to throw away. It worked great once the cobwebs were vacuumed out and the play head was given a good scrubbing with 99% isopropyl alcohol. I was able to hook it directly to a MiniDV camcorder and transfer things directly to digital tape.
For a 20 year old tape, the quality of the picture and sound was remarkably good. Nice and crisp, no ghosting, no static. From what I can tell, that’s not unusual for 3/4″ compared to VHS. It just holds up better over time.
And that seems to be a recurring theme when you get into storage media: The older the format, the more resistant to damage. Think about it: A tiny magnet can wipe out a huge hard drive. A single scratch on a DVD can render gigabytes of data unusable. Moving back to CDs and floppies doesn’t eliminate the vulnerability, but it does decrease the amount of data that can be lost in a single accident.
I suppose one of the sturdiest forms of data storage is also one of the oldest: The punchcard. They’re pretty much immune to magnetic interference. Scratches can be pretty much ignored. Sure, they’re flammable, but burning a disc doesn’t do it any good either.
Of course, the amount of volume you’d need for storage space might be an issue. It’s fun to imagine a punchcard-driven iPod, but it probably wouldn’t be much fun to carry it around…