How old is the oldest storage media you still use?

[Deleted member 719522]

I still have a 16GB USB stick which has been with me for 13 or 14 years now. Originally I bought it because my external hard drive broke and this was big enough to store a few Wii ISOs to run on a USB loader. Now I use it for transferring small files from one computer to another and making bootable Linux USBs. Not sure how much longer the flash memory will last but the case certainly shows signs of age.

 

[AmandaRose]

I still use Cassette tapes (1963) for my ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 projects.
Every now and again I also break out my ZX Microdrive (1983) to save things on but the Microdrive was always super unreliable to use

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[Joom]

An 8 GB SanDisk Cruzer I bought around 20 years ago in middle school. It's my OS stick.

 

[HunterNelson]

I still have a 16GB USB stick which has been with me for 13 or 14 years now. Originally I bought it because my external hard drive broke and this was big enough to store a few Wii ISOs to run on a USB loader. Now I use it for transferring small files from one computer to another and making bootable Linux USBs. Not sure how much longer the flash memory will last but the case certainly shows signs of age.









I still use a couple of old 3.5-inch floppy disks, mostly for nostalgia. They were part of a vintage computer setup I picked up at a garage sale years ago. While I don't really use them for practical storage anymore, it's fun to keep them as relics from an era where 1.44MB was a big deal! I first heard about BoomEssays boomessays.com from a friend who used their service for a research paper, so I decided to give it a try for my history assignment. I was impressed by how professional and straightforward the process was. The essay they delivered was well-researched, thoughtfully written, and perfectly formatted. It matched all my professor’s requirements, and I scored an excellent grade. This platform has become my go-to for academic assistance!

I have been using 32 GB for 2 years because the old one was stolen by my best friends. lol

 

[JuanMena]

From mid 2000s:

Something curious, the one in my R4, while 2GB it supports 32k cluster size. The rest only supports 16kb.

 

[DinohScene]

I've got a couple of cassettes from the 70's, a 5.25" floppy from the early 80's and a HDD or two from the late 80's early 90's.
Oldest storage medium I still use on a frequent basis is a 10? year old 265 GB mSATA in a external enclosure.

 

[qzack]

Does recordable media count?

I have two spindles of CD-R's that I burned in the mid 90's
All the discs are readable and can be accessed without issues.

 

[impeeza]

I have a couple of boxes with Punch Cards.

 

[CoolKid575]

A 32GB Sandisk Cruzer I got in 2020, it's a bit bent, so I only use it for non-essential stuff like TV shows; but it still works perfectly fine.

 

[SylverReZ]

I still use Cassette tapes (1963) for my ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 projects.
Every now and again I also break out my ZX Microdrive (1983) to save things on but the Microdrive was always super unreliable to use
View attachment 466668

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The Microdrive carts have a sponge that tends to disintegrate overtime, just like with the 8-track tapes, and are much trickier to repair. They weren't very successful and were mostly found on business variants of the ZX Spectrum; although, you can order a drive separately. After all, these use the same chemical formulation as a cassette tape, and the parts are identical to a recorder, not sure if reeling it inside of a cassette should work.

 

[Chary]

It's this super goofy little 1GB USB stick. It's ridiculously slow. I used to use it for my middle school assignments I needed to print at the library. So that'd put it around 2008 or so. But it looks like a little surfboard, and it's cute, so I keep it around.

 

[The Catboy]

This 4gb microSD that’s like 12 years old

 

[AmandaRose]

The Microdrive carts have a sponge that tends to disintegrate overtime, just like with the 8-track tapes, and are much trickier to repair. They weren't very successful and were mostly found on business variants of the ZX Spectrum; although, you can order a drive separately. After all, these use the same chemical formulation as a cassette tape, and the parts are identical to a recorder, not sure if reeling it inside of a cassette should work.

Yes I have repaired many a Microdrive cart not only for my ZX Spectrum but also for my Sinclair QL.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I have an old 2 GB flash drive that was on my keychain throughout the latter half of my school years, and got used for school work and random games/emulators. I put portable apps on it so I could have access to some essential apps on the school PCs without installing anything.
I still use that flash drive occasionally to transfer small files, most recently it has been used to update the BIOS on my desktop. It's still working perfectly, but it's pretty slow (as flash drives all used to be), and still has some ancient files from way back on it.

The absolute smallest storage media I still have is a 32 MB SD card that came with a Canon camera, a pretty decent camera too, they just uber cheaped out on the included storage. 32 MB happened to be just enough to contain all the files needed to hack a Wii so for many years I kept that card in my Twilight Princess cover with Twilight Hack, HBC, and some essential homebrew and WAD files on it. But since bannerbomb/letterbomb happened and I sold my copy of Twilight Princess that card hasn't seen any use since.

From mid 2000s:

View attachment 469633


Something curious, the one in my R4, while 2GB it supports 32k cluster size. The rest only supports 16kb.

I still have a couple of those (the 1 GB variant though) took some searching to find the Japan ones back in the day. They don't get used anymore, the r/w speed is pretty slow by modern standards (though they were considered fast back then) and 1 GB is just a bit small to be useful. When SDHC came around I did eventually upgrade my flashcart and put a 8 GB in it which fits a LOT of DS games.

I have a bunch of other MicroSD and SD cards in small sizes (some 2 GB or 4 GB ones that came with 3DS consoles and some 8 GB I was using for other stuff) as well, and sometimes I just need 2-4 GB to install an OS or to boot a Raspberry Pi so some of them still get some occasional use.

 

[SylverReZ]

Before I had flash drives to store my data on, I used a cheap camcorder that had built-in NAND flash and USB 1.1. Read/write speeds were super slow, but this was before I could even afford them, as they were still quite expensive in the 2000's.

 

[_47iscool]

A 4GB GigaWare (RadioShack) USB flash drive which in fact is actually a SanDisk Cruzer back from about mid to late 2008. It still works.