Tips for maintaining your media for eternity and beyond<article>
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Reader Kirk Edgar has a question for the ages. He writes:</p>
I’m in the process of cleaning out my iMac—removing data that’s not current and apps that I don’t use or won’t work under Yosemite. Because I’ve done this before and been stuck with unreadable media, what’s the best way of archiving digital material so that it can most likely be retrieved in the future if desired?
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Given that my prophetic powers are no more honed than the average guy who writes on the Internet, I can’t, with absolute certainty, tell you which formats will and won’t survive. But I can offer some guidelines.</p><h2>For archived files, stick with popular formats</h2>
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You need spend only five minutes with a dedicated AppleWorks user to get a hint of how painful it can be to lose files because their format has been relegated to the dustheap. Much as you may prefer working with App X, if it’s a not-terribly-popular app and it saves files in a proprietary format, you could be looking at trouble down the road. At the very least, when saving files and presented with the option to make an additional copy in a popular format, seize it. This may not result in a file as editable as you may like, but at least you have
some kind of copy that you can work with at a later date.</p><p class="jumpTag"><a href="/article/2871283/tips-for-maintaining-your-media-for-eternity-and-beyond.html#jump">To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here[/url]</p></section></article>
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Tips for maintaining your media for eternity and beyond
