Analog vs digital longevity

[Regulus67]

I am very much in favour of digital media. But a youtuber really showcased how much digital hardware can be be both a blessing, and a curse.
When he lists all the digital hardware that has become obsolete over the years, it is something I absolutely can relate to.
Even if he makes the comparison between analog and digital sound recording, and storage. It has been the same with simple documents as well. I remember WordPerfect and other early word document formats.

When he presents very old vintage tape recorders, and shows how it still can be used today. I am stunned.

The risk of loosing access to digital storage down the line, was something I used to wonder about. Like 20 years ago, as I was moving from the analog to the digital world. But I haven't thought about it for years. Because I have become so used to store everything in a digital format.
The last time I wrote text on paper with a typewriter, is like 25-30 years ago. Now, I sometimes print a document, but very rarely.
Probably 99% of my documents are digital only. Very convenient, and space saving.

I guess I probably have a bit better chance of accessing old digital content I stored years ago, going all the way back to floppy disks. Because I still have old hardware stored away. And software for that hardware, like operating systems and drivers etc.

I still have 35mm film and photos printed, that I took back in the 80's. And I can look at those photos any time. But I haven't had an analog camera since the early 90's. I guess I have lost a lot of digital photos from the mid 90's to early 2000s.

But what about younger generations that never made the transit. They are born in the digitised world. Will there be a memory hole in the future? As hardware changes so drastically over time.

 

[BotchQue]

A very interesting question, and one that just came up this afternoon on, of all things, a woodworking forum. Guy was wondering if paper-printed clock faces lasted very long, and on a lark I went to amazoid to see if you could still buy papyrus paper; you can!
Digital recording, of visual, audio and written info, only goes back a few decades, and analog recording of audio and visual, maybe a century before that. Written info on papyrus goes back easily 4,000 years. (and visual recording on cave paintings/petroglyphs, who knows?)
An interesting question, but my head hurts after I watched the news today o-boy, and I think I just need to go for a long walk at this point tonight. Will be clicking back into this thread tomorrow!

 

[theorist9]

This is a big concern for libraries. I recall the National Archives raising this as an issue several years ago.

The two key concerns are:

(1) Preserving the electronics needed to play back the media and/or retrive it so it can be transferred to a new medium.

(2) Degradation of the media itself. A lot of the digital media is too new for us to know just how long it can reliably store data.

Some articles about both digital and analog media:

How Long Do Video Tapes Last? - The Broadcast Bridge - Connecting IT to Broadcast

It's one of the most mystifying questions in video and usually only those with the most valuable programming bother to ask it: How long does video tape last?

www.thebroadcastbridge.com

Study Reveals New Findings on Longevity of Legacy Magnetic Audio Tape • CLIR

Study Reveals New Findings on Longevity of Legacy Magnetic Audio Tape Findings suggest that polyester-based magnetic audio tapes that are playable today and kept at standard room conditions may remain usable for as long as 100 years A new study published by the Council on Library and...

www.clir.org

Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays — Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) Notes 19/1 - Canada.ca

www.canada.ca

 

[drrich2]

When he presents very old vintage tape recorders, and shows how it still can be used today.

Perhaps the issue is more one of devices that both store and produce (or display) content vs. a digital vs. analogue issue.

A tape recorder is not just a recording device, it also plays the media.

An old school computer's floppy disk is solely a storage medium; you have to put it in a drive in or connected to a computer to 'play' the contents in a useful way.

The last time I wrote text on paper with a typewriter, is like 25-30 years ago.

And how many of the 'files' (documents) you wrote by typewriter can you find today?

But I haven't had an analog camera since the early 90's. I guess I have lost a lot of digital photos from the mid 90's to early 2000s.

Back in the days of film camera predominance, it was common to get your photos back with the negative included. How many negatives have you lost from those days? How many have the rest of us lost?

So the concern is media durability/reliability over time and accessibility of media designed for what became legacy products.

Digital has some advantages. When you make a copy of an analogue file, whether a photo with a copier or one audio cassette tape to another, there's slight loss of quality. Make a copy of a copy of a copy and so on, and you get degradation. It's also considerable work to make copies and then store them somehow.

With digital you can make exact copies repeatedly without quality loss, send them via Internet or thumb drives, store copies in different places, rename files and organize into folders, etc...

 

[Regulus67]

With digital you can make exact copies repeatedly without quality loss, send them via Internet or thumb drives, store copies in different places, rename files and organize into folders, etc...

This is perhaps the best reason to use digital.

And how many of the 'files' (documents) you wrote by typewriter can you find today?

I still have the documents I wanted to keep.
But I have two books, mostly hand written, that is very very dear to me. They have 100 A4 pages.

The black is filled with text. I call it my Book of Dreams. Where I recorded my dreams from -92 to -96.

The other is about half full, with poetry, lyrics and kind of philosophical thoughts I had.

I also kept my Vinyl records, from I was a young teenager. This is a 6 LP collection box from Readers Digest 1975.

 

[seggy]

IMO analog is far, far worse than digital for personal information retention and recall. It's simply a nightmare to migrate as info storage in general modernises, and prone to degredation unless kept in suitable conditions.

I still have everything I took on the very first digital cameras I had access to, and they're still sitting on one of my online NAS's, one offline NAS and Glacier - I'm literally ~30 seconds away from being able to retrieve 30 year old digital photos in Lightroom Classic, because they've relatively effortlessly moved with my changing tech.

As physical things from a bygone era, there is obviously far more personal merit to physical media. But that is a more a tangibility of the thing aspect, not necessarily what it contains.


At a societal level however, the opposite holds true. Digital media is too easily lost over the decades due to economic, political and other factors - even when it comes to national archives. And overwritten hard disks won't leave any clues for future scholars.

 

[Regulus67]

IMO analog is far, far worse than digital for personal information retention and recall. It's simply a nightmare to migrate as info storage in general modernises, and prone to degredation unless kept in suitable conditions.
...
At a societal level however, the opposite holds true. Digital media is too easily lost over the decades due to economic, political and other factors - even when it comes to national archives. And overwritten hard disks won't leave any clues for future scholars.

Good points on the challenges of preserving for continued and future use.
Which prompted me to think about it again, this time on a wider, but still personal level.

My mother passed away two years ago. And my youngest half sister stealthily confiscated her computer and phone.
The only media my other siblings and I had access to was paper documents and photos.

With digital media only, we might collect an enormous amount these days, as it is so easy to store.
But will any of that be shared, or passed on? There is probably not a whole lot that would be interesting to the family, but some would be.
I assume all our digital content is user and password protected, as well

 

[seggy]

Good points on the challenges of preserving for continued and future use.
Which prompted me to think about it again, this time on a wider, but still personal level.

My mother passed away two years ago. And my youngest half sister stealthily confiscated her computer and phone.
The only media my other siblings and I had access to was paper documents and photos.

With digital media only, we might collect an enormous amount these days, as it is so easy to store.
But will any of that be shared, or passed on? There is probably not a whole lot that would be interesting to the family, but some would be.
I assume all our digital content is user and password protected, as well

This essentially comes down to "IT isn't important until it is", which is, well, explicably still a thing among the majority of the populace. Personally, it's inexplicable given that IT has run the world for a while now, and it should be pretty obvious to anyone with even a bit of awareness.

The issues pointed out by most like above aren't necessarily problems of the medium as such. It's that most individuals just have a completely different approach to what is immediately tangible (even if that tangible part isn't the actually important part) and what isn't. It's pretty much literally being unable to see past your nose.

Your data, or anyone you're associated with's data, should be treated like any other treasured possession but in the context of current technology in terms of how you safeguard it. That thought, and the ability to act on it, should be individually automatic at this point.

It's definitely not a media problem. It's not a technology problem really, especially at this point where it really is fully accessible to even your average idiot. It is, absolutely, a people problem.

I appreciate that someone neurodivergent in the way that e.g. I am can end up approaching this kind of stuff in a different / more practically effective way especially " " because he is a nerd, ha-ha " " (even though this kind thinking hasn't been relevant for at least 15 years), but I still balk at why so many people struggle to understand this and related concepts.

 

[Varmann]

Documentation and longterm storage are not very sexy subjects. But they are important to make our civilization tick.

In my country there are a treasure trove of written letters from the 18th century, (upper class) people back then wrote letters and diaries like we today use text messages and mobile cameras to communicate and document. Today we still have access to much of this.

I have lost lots of data up through the years due to not thinking through storage solutions. All my raw data to my PhD was stored on two different mediums. A 1.44 MB diskette backup, using a proprietary compression algorithm (3x500 diskettes all together), and a zip disk backup (20 100 MB disks). The diskette backup program provider went belly up, and my program disketts got read errors. The zip drives/disks were not that reliable and after 5 years it was impossible read anything.

A friend working at our national library said that their strategy to digital storage is to avoid long term storage solutions. They have everything online on redundant systems and can easily upgrade to new storage solutions. They want all data contributions as network transfer and they get pretty upset if they get sent a box with old RW cds.

Unfortunately much of our huge digital archives in data centers rely on a nonstop maintenance shifting out broken disks/SSDs. Our storage hardware providers rely on components from a rather limited number of factories. I guess we do not need that big of a global conflict, military or economic, before our data centers start to degrade.

My bet is that our current age in the future will be regarded as the "information void", where there were enormous amounts of information but almost nothing got saved to the future. Like the library of Alexandria.

 

[Regulus67]

The zip drives/disks were not that reliable and after 5 years it was impossible read anything.
...
My bet is that our current age in the future will be regarded as the "information void", where there were enormous amounts of information but almost nothing got saved to the future. Like the library of Alexandria.

I remember the zip drives. I wanted to have one, they looked great at the time. Reading your story, makes me glad I didn't purchase one.


I have read many very old texts from different parts of the world. And have always wondered what was lost in the Library of Alexandria.
The Vatican has a large library, and who knows what is hidden there. Or how long it will continue to exist.

If it becomes an "information void", I guess they will call it the Dark Ages 2.0

 

[drrich2]

In my country there are a treasure trove of written letters from the 18th century, (upper class) people back then wrote letters and diaries like we today use text messages and mobile cameras to communicate and document. Today we still have access to much of this.

A couple of issues come to mind with this.

1.) Do we want our personal correspondences perused by strangers a couple of hundred years from now?

2.) I imagine people back then wrote with more 'class.' In this day and age of 'sexting,' dark humor and other rather blatant self-expressions, the amount of 'fit for 3rd party eyes' correspondence may be a bit more...limited.

That said, I think there will be a plethora of content to wade through, and a key problem will be deciding what's important. Due to the virtual explosion of educational, vocational and migration-driven diversity, it's hard to know to consider representative of a society and age. Likely the written narratives of the powerful and famous will be singled out, as they have been in the past.

 

[Varmann]

A couple of issues come to mind with this.

1.) Do we want our personal correspondences perused by strangers a couple of hundred years from now?

2.) I imagine people back then wrote with more 'class.' In this day and age of 'sexting,' dark humor and other rather blatant self-expressions, the amount of 'fit for 3rd party eyes' correspondence may be a bit more...limited.

That said, I think there will be a plethora of content to wade through, and a key problem will be deciding what's important. Due to the virtual explosion of educational, vocational and migration-driven diversity, it's hard to know to consider representative of a society and age. Likely the written narratives of the powerful and famous will be singled out, as they have been in the past.

1+2) Well, some wrote pretty nice and well formulated, but there were a lot of "sexting" equivalents. Mozart for one, was not always as so clean in mouth "oh my ass burns like fire"

Saving a representative portion of everyday communication could be important to understand a period in time. My friend at our national library told me they in 2002 did download and save the whole national internet domain as a time capsule for future research.

I have no problems with libraries doing that. However, when Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, NSA, insurance companies etc, do it, they may dig into and combine data in ways that may be rather unpleasant for you.

 

[carylee2002]

I'm totally into analog, from shooting film, listening to vinyl using tube equipment, to using older cameras and a lot of time using old m42 film lenses on my older Fujifilm digital cameras. My last camera i bought was the GFX50R and till this day, that camera is still in use and the value hasn't gone done much since it's discontinued years ago.

 

[throAU]

Digital (today) is fine. What isn't is DRM.

Analog is subject to much more quality loss over time due to errors, whereas digital is more resistant to physical media degradation causing quality loss. It can also be 1:1 copied, whereas analog loses quality typically when you duplicate.

Other digital issues particularly with earlier digital media were sampling rate and compression to deal with media size, but I believe we're at the point now where we have the capacity and digital sensors good enough to capture GOOD quality media if we spend the storage capacity on it.

With regards to digital vs. paper for documents, etc. - I can back up and copy digital files to multiple locations across the globe and store them for virtually nothing.

Physical paper? Massive quantities of archive boxes that need to be stored safely away from water, fire, etc. Want a backup? You need a whole lot more physical space. I say this as someone working for a company who has a heap of physical paper they're storing. Its ridiculous.


That said, all the music I buy these days (as opposed to stream via iTunes) is vinyl.

But that's more to do with the collectible LP packaging, etc. than the audio quality.

 

[Bento.Box]

Digital has way better longevity as long as you use open formats and do your backups.

I still retain stuff like photos from the 2000s.

Analogue stuff deteriorates, gets lost or thrown away over all the moves over time. And its cumbersome to access. Easy and quick to click through your photos from back then, but how often do you retrieve the physical ones from your deep storage in the basement?

 

[Varmann]

Digital has way better longevity as long as you use open formats and do your backups.

I still retain stuff like photos from the 2000s.

Analogue stuff deteriorates, gets lost or thrown away over all the moves over time. And its cumbersome to access. Easy and quick to click through your photos from back then, but how often do you retrieve the physical ones from your deep storage in the basement?

That is a very large "IF".

I still have all my analog photos and negatives from the 70s and 80s. Even most of my parents and grandparents pictures. But none of my digital stuff, including my digital master copy of my PhD Thesis. It only takes a few mishaps, wrong medium choices or some neglect to destroy digital backups.

I certainly have all my digital photos, digitized music CDs and movie DVDs from the mid 90s online and backed up, but for how long? Will anyone after me follow keep it up? They can certainly use or sell my vinyl collection, but my harddisks?

Of course companies are happy that we have an "each person their own collection" culture. But we will loose a lot of cultural capital in a couple of generations. But we save a lot of space.

 

[throAU]

That is a very large "IF".

I still have all my analog photos and negatives from the 70s and 80s. Even most of my parents and grandparents pictures. But none of my digital stuff, including my digital master copy of my PhD Thesis. It only takes a few mishaps, wrong medium choices or some neglect to destroy digital backups.

I certainly have all my digital photos, digitized music CDs and movie DVDs from the mid 90s online and backed up, but for how long? Will anyone after me follow keep it up? They can certainly use or sell my vinyl collection, but my harddisks?

Of course companies are happy that we have an "each person their own collection" culture. But we will loose a lot of cultural capital in a couple of generations. But we save a lot of space.

Paper photos and stuff just need one house fire.

If you’ve lost digital stuff that’s 100% because you’re careless and haven’t bothered to back it up.

 

[Varmann]

Paper photos and stuff just need one house fire.

If you’ve lost digital stuff that’s 100% because you’re careless and haven’t bothered to back it up.

It is not that simple.

I have endured one severe house fire and still have all my physical photos.

I had backed up my digital stuff. Fourfold!
Unfortunately using a property compression algoritm from a company that folded, with program diskettes that got read errors after some years. Also the backup media I used in the 80s and early 90s were 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" diskettes and zip drives were not suited for long term storage. It made sense at the time, it had a cost, but after -94 I have not lost anything.

 

[drrich2]

Unfortunately using a property compression algoritm from a company that folded, with program diskettes that got read errors after some years. Also the backup media I used in the 80s and early 90s were 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" diskettes and zip drives were not suited for long term storage.

Back in the days of 5-1/4" and 3.5" 'floppy' disks, storage media was low enough capacity that often a number of disks were needed. Sometimes they'd get labeled, sometimes not, they ended up in a drawer or container sitting for years... And to access the data on them was a tedious, disk-by-disk exercise. If you had 5 disks of 'Photos' and wanted one particular photo you knew was somewhere on one of them, was it worth the bother to hunt for it?

In today's world of thumb drives, external SSDs and hard disk drives, etc..., we've got big storage. The whole collection can be put in one place, whether an external SSD or maybe a NAS (or both). This makes it easier to move content when one's choice of media changes - such as from HDD to SSD or NAS.

None of which guarantees success!

I still have all my analog photos and negatives from the 70s and 80s. Even most of my parents and grandparents pictures.

That's good! That said, a lot of analog photos ended up with photo albums with 'magnetic' pages, and if you want to digitize one (e.g.: scan it), that can be a problem. If you don't peel back the clear plastic sheet, you get glare from the scanner, and if you do, it might've bonded to the photo, damaging it when peeled back.

My point is, analog content isn't always stored in a sound manner for long-term preservation. And even if it is...a little quick Googling suggests photo negatives tend to be good for an estimated 25-50 years. Photo print durability varies widely, depending on how you had it made. Which speaks to this point:

Of course companies are happy that we have an "each person their own collection" culture. But we will loose a lot of cultural capital in a couple of generations.

Analog has a limited lifespan, unless you digitize it.

In a way, this thread is ironic in taking a bit of an 'either/or' stance, when it seems an analog content collection of value ought to also be digitized (not just for long-term security, but share ability - like e-mailing a relative a copy of an old photo).

 

[Varmann]

Back in the days of 5-1/4" and 3.5" 'floppy' disks, storage media was low enough capacity that often a number of disks were needed. Sometimes they'd get labeled, sometimes not, they ended up in a drawer or container sitting for years... And to access the data on them was a tedious, disk-by-disk exercise. If you had 5 disks of 'Photos' and wanted one particular photo you knew was somewhere on one of them, was it worth the bother to hunt for it?

In today's world of thumb drives, external SSDs and hard disk drives, etc..., we've got big storage. The whole collection can be put in one place, whether an external SSD or maybe a NAS (or both). This makes it easier to move content when one's choice of media changes - such as from HDD to SSD or NAS.

None of which guarantees success!


That's good! That said, a lot of analog photos ended up with photo albums with 'magnetic' pages, and if you want to digitize one (e.g.: scan it), that can be a problem. If you don't peel back the clear plastic sheet, you get glare from the scanner, and if you do, it might've bonded to the photo, damaging it when peeled back.

My point is, analog content isn't always stored in a sound manner for long-term preservation. And even if it is...a little quick Googling suggests photo negatives tend to be good for an estimated 25-50 years. Photo print durability varies widely, depending on how you had it made. Which speaks to this point:


Analog has a limited lifespan, unless you digitize it.

In a way, this thread is ironic in taking a bit of an 'either/or' stance, when it seems an analog content collection of value ought to also be digitized (not just for long-term security, but share ability - like e-mailing a relative a copy of an old photo).

I am for long term storage, be it digital or analog!

Both have advantages and disadvantages. Used the right they in a way complement each other.

As i see it:
Analog media is more of a store and forget solution. With the right preparation you can store things easily hundreds or more years with little degradation. But that takes some knowledge. Acid free paper (books and photos), airtight-dark-cool and properly fixated (photos and negatives) etc. Space might be a limiting factor as well.

Digital media is convenient, but also need constant care. Directly accessible and very space efficient. However, leave a digital copy for thirty odd years and you may have problems accessing it. The list of vanished digital media formats is long. In addition comes degradation of the storage medium itself, or the data on it (bit rot). Cloud or stream solutions are just as safe as the longterm business decisions of the provider.

As a civilization we certainly need to diversify but everyone do not need to use of both formats. Either way you need a certain expertise to keep your information safe long term

 

[Regulus67]

...
In a way, this thread is ironic in taking a bit of an 'either/or' stance, when it seems an analog content collection of value ought to also be digitized (not just for long-term security, but share ability - like e-mailing a relative a copy of an old photo).

I think both analog and digital media is good, as varmann also says. Personally, I like to have digital storage as well.
Just recently purchased a Promise Pegasus R4i 32TB RAID to do just that
Still, I think the tendency for many is not to have much digital storage either. And Apple certainly nudges people to forego large local digital storage.

Preserving digital games is another area that is challenging. Some because of DRM, and some because they are no longer supported by modern hardware. And here the trend is also moving away from physical media. Partly it is also an issue of ownership. Physical media means you own your own copy. The digital version does not in many cases.


Here is a rare occasion, where old games are released as open source 👍

EA open-sources four more Command & Conquer games

EA opens up

www.theverge.com

 

[throAU]

It is not that simple.

I have endured one severe house fire and still have all my physical photos.

I had backed up my digital stuff. Fourfold!
Unfortunately using a property compression algoritm from a company that folded, with program diskettes that got read errors after some years. Also the backup media I used in the 80s and early 90s were 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" diskettes and zip drives were not suited for long term storage. It made sense at the time, it had a cost, but after -94 I have not lost anything.

Single backups and/or not testing your backups or moving to new media within a reasonable media life expectancy is not really backing things up properly.

No storage lasts forever, all media dies.

The difference between digital and analog storage is that you can make 100% perfect 1:1 copies of digital, analog degrades with copies.

 

[aberdeenmeadows]

With all media, analog or digital, you have to make sure that they are looked at, preserved, and protected the best way you possibly can.

With analog, at least a digital copy can be made. With a digital copy, at least you can make analog media or photo albums, as well as duplicated backups.

I do make backups and copies to the best of my ability. I use Apple Photos to curate all my digital media. I used to have my desktop Mac keep every video and photo that Apple has as a downloaded copy on an external drive, but then something happened and I have to start over again with a new file and have it stored "somewhere" on another external drive or pay to have internal storage upgraded (Intel Mac 27" - it can be done).

With digital though, we don't know something is missing until well, we search for it. I did a photo shoot of video and photos and I had a Mac mini at the time and my external storage options were quite slim so for a year, there were a series of photo shoots that were in the Photos app and I didn't sync at the time.

When I do a photo shoot, I import everything into Apple Photos because it is super easy for me to view them and export based on date so I can have a flat copy. I do this on special photo shoots. Well, when work flow changes it messes things up and so I had this one special photo shoot that yes, I did export to a flat file but for some reason move forward eight years later I look at the flat files and see some (maybe a lot) are missing. Well, that year I had manually copied from one drive to the other and somehow didn't quite copy all the files? No worries, I remember keeping a copy of the photos library for that year, opened it up and yes, they were there!!! But 8 years later, and now I cannot export the photos and videos of that photo shoot. Kept giving me errors. So I just copied all of my photo libraries to one folder and left it at that and figured I would probably just do screen shots and screen record the videos off the screen. Two years later, I do all kinds of upgrades to my 2017 Mac to make it faster and more efficient (this was actually last week) and I came across the photo library. Opened it up, found the photo shoot, and everything exports perfect!!!

We aren't always that lucky. As computers and apps upgrade, they don't necessarily load older files, or have issues with them. Not always, but enough to cause grief. My 2017 Mac can't upgrade past Ventura so I wonder about the integrity of the Photos App on the 2017 Mac when I have my iPhone, and two new MacBook Pro's with the current OS. What bug might show up that Apple isn't aware of. Over the weekend I chose NOT to sync my Photos app on my 2017 Mac.

I have dealt with the same issues over the last 40 years of my life when it comes to backing up and restoring those files. Ensuring that there is still integrity. I have a few backup files that are over 3TB. One little thing could corrupt the file and I would not know it for years.

I had OneDrive files that sync to the cloud and for some reason, my Sync stopped working. For some odd reason, I had a cloud backup of the cloud backup files. When I was on a trip, I desperately needed those files, but they weren't in my synced one-drive. I didn't take the computer with me that created them. However, I was able to log in to the cloud, find the files, download them and get my work done. Anything can happen. Anything.

All we can do is to do the best we possibly can to keep the integrity of our files.

1. 1. Most important must have non-media files
   1. Use Microsoft, Apple, or Google
      1. Ensure you have ONE PC that keeps a copy
      2. Backup THAT PC to a different cloud account
      3. Backup THAT PC to an external drive
      4. Remember, if something gets deleted, it deletes everywhere (sync, remember)
2. Media
   1. You have to work out your own workflow, but just make sure that what you create, gets backed up and that backup gets backed up.
   2. Organization is key, so you can find it later
   3. Access the media often
   4. File Formats
      1. As computers progress, you may want to consider using tools to convert your media to the newer formats.
      2. I have a lot of H.264 files that I am converting to H.265
   5. Upgrade to the most fastest and capable computer you can, with the most memory and storage you can afford. Your time is valuable.
   6. Refurbished hard drives are a lot cheaper
      1. ONLY USE THEM TO STORE BACKUPS

 

[Varmann]

Single backups and/or not testing your backups or moving to new media within a reasonable media life expectancy is not really backing things up properly.

No storage lasts forever, all media dies.

The difference between digital and analog storage is that you can make 100% perfect 1:1 copies of digital, analog degrades with copies.

In the 80s, when I had my bad experiences, you did not have any good options. 5 1/4" or 3 1/2" diskettes, lots of them, was it. To reduce the amount you could use a compression program, but those algoritms were not open. Dos 3.3 gave you pretty limited tools to work with. Open source and formats were not a thing back then. Algoritms changed and were often incompatible between different program versions. You were unable to take backup copies of the program diskettes due to copy protection. You did probably not have internet or ethernet to connect local or remote computers.

It was another time and I am very glad it is gone. It was a great joy when Linux came in the 90s and changed a lot of that and made available all those nice tools we are so dependent on today.