Digitize All of Your Old Media

Digital Media

Slip an old 2.5-inch laptop hard drive into an inexpensive enclosure like this Ultra USB 2.0 Storage for quick, portable access to your old data. Hard disks and old computers: For hard disks, including those from old machines, retrieving the data may simply be a matter of sliding it into an external drive enclosure and plugging it in. Most laptops have 2.5-inch disk drives, while 3.5-inch drives have been the desktop standard for the past decade. Enclosures for either size with USB connectors start at about $30. Make sure that the drive and the enclosure connections are compatible; for instance, check whether the drive is SATA or ATA/IDE (which will be marked on the drive).

Removable media: If you have a lot of one type of old media, it may be best simply to get an old drive to match. USB readers for multiple memory-card formats and for external 3.5-inch floppy drives with USB connectors are readily available online for about $20. Other drives--tape backup drives; magneto-optical drives; and Zip, Jaz and Ditto drives--are easy to find on eBay. You may need special adapter cables to connect old serial ports to USB, and you may need the original software to recover compressed or protected backups.

Media Conversion

If you have just a few old disks or cartridges to handle, a number of data conversion companies will be happy to take a box of old media from you and either deliver their data to you via e-mail or burn it onto CDs or DVDs. If you live in a city, look for local companies, including PC repair shops, to save on shipping; and call multiple companies to compare prices. Advanced Computer Innovations can convert an astonishing array of media, operating systems, and file formats.

Data Recovery

Due to age or damage, some of your media and hardware might be unreadable. If you have the appropriate drive, you can use data recovery software to try to save the data--including lost photos or video from camera memory cards. Virtual Lab Data Recovery supports most common media, hardware, and file systems. Disk Doctors offers both software and services, including data recovery from damaged media and devices.

File Formats

After you've backed up all of the data on a device that you can use, it still may not be readable or searchable. Documents from old machines and software may be saved in binary formats that their modern equivalents can't understand. There are two approaches to converting data that your current software can't read into friendly formats: Look for conversion software or software add-ons online; or look for emulation software. The Emulator Zone has all sorts of old computer operating system emulators, including Commodore, Amiga, and Macintosh.