Guides

Should you keep the tapes after digitizing them?

Our honest take, including the part that doesn't help us sell you anything.

We give you your original tapes back with every order, so this isn't really a question we have a financial stake in one way or the other. Here's what we'd actually tell a friend.

Keep them, at least for a while

Don't get rid of your tapes the day you get your digital files back. Check the digital copies first — watch them, make sure the audio and video look right, make sure nothing's missing. Once you're confident the digital version is good and you've backed it up somewhere (not just on one hard drive), the tapes have done their job.

The tapes aren't a real long-term backup

It's tempting to think of the physical tape as your "real" copy and the digital file as the convenient one. It's actually the other way around. The tape is still degrading in the closet whether or not you look at it, and eventually it won't be playable at all no matter how carefully you store it. The digital file, backed up properly, doesn't have that clock running.

What we'd actually do

• Keep the tapes until you've verified the digital files.
• Back up the digital files in at least two places — a cloud backup and a physical drive, not just one or the other.
• After that, keeping the tapes is about sentimental value, not technical necessity. Some people keep a few favorites and let the rest go. Both are reasonable calls.