Remember that we are talking about regular folks and not trained professionals at museums, universities or other facilities with specialized equipment for retrieving images from ancient media. Yes the knowledge will be there and I would think some version of the equipment also, but I don't think this will be available to the average person but only to professionals. How long has the floppy disk been gone? I don't have a way to access the old floppies I have, you might have, but I doubt if most people do. Lets say that the floppy disk has been discontinued for thirty years, now instead of going into the future a hundred years, lets just go seventy years. Where would you go to find someone to extract the data on those floppies and how much would that cost?
I assume (and hope) that your family is important to you. Now to continue that thought, lets say that you have made a significant number of images of your family in two ways. In the first situation, all the images are on storage devices and in the second situation, the images have been printed and are paper. The printed images and the images stored in various digital storage devices will each go in to their respective "shoe boxes" to be found by a member of your family in the distant future. Now put yourself in the shoes of that far in the future Superfly family member, if you say that, instead of the paper images, you would be happier to find that shoe box of SD cards, CD's, DVD's and etc and that you believe that these could be easily converted to print form, then I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. Thanks.

How many images are you gonna print? Are you gonna make sure they’re archival prints? Are you gonna use archival storage? Sure I print, but usually only wallhangers and competition prints. The truth is most family photo sharing is done digitally. You have 5 1/4” floppies? Technology that’s 45 years old. You can buy a USB floppy drive for under $25. Same for 3 1/2”. You can also buy a USB adapter for just about any industry standard PC storage device that’s ever existed. And if your family cares about those photos they’re not gonna sit on some storage device for 100 years. How many people have taken their old Super 8 movies and had them transferred to DVD? As a matter of fact, what do people do when they have a bunch of old photos and negatives to archive? They usually scan and digitize them.

Remember that we are talking about regular folks and not trained professionals at museums, universities or other facilities with specialized equipment for retrieving images from ancient media. Yes the knowledge will be there and I would think some version of the equipment also, but I don't think this will be available to the average person but only to professionals. How long has the floppy disk been gone? I don't have a way to access the old floppies I have, you might have, but I doubt if most people do. Lets say that the floppy disk has been discontinued for thirty years, now instead of going into the future a hundred years, lets just go seventy years. Where would you go to find someone to extract the data on those floppies and how much would that cost?
I assume (and hope) that your family is important to you. Now to continue that thought, lets say that you have made a significant number of images of your family in two ways. In the first situation, all the images are on storage devices and in the second situation, the images have been printed and are paper. The printed images and the images stored in various digital storage devices will each go in to their respective "shoe boxes" to be found by a member of your family in the distant future. Now put yourself in the shoes of that far in the future Superfly family member, if you say that, instead of the paper images, you would be happier to find that shoe box of SD cards, CD's, DVD's and etc and that you believe that these could be easily converted to print form, then I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. Thanks.

As mentioned in an earlier post, there are certain media which contain data, but are not readily (read economically) readable. At my former employer, we devote large areas of climate controlled rooms and vaults, to protect corporate documents, and not just the charter and others. We have millions of punched cards, tapes, discs, floppies, etc., which require storage for the life of the company.

Now, the problem comes with the need for appropriate working hardware (magnetic and paper tape, disc, and card readers). Now, add to that the operating systems which were used to write that data. Are the original operating systems even recoverable, and at what cost?

Just askin'.

My first film camera was a camera my dad brought back from Japan at the end of WWII. Which he gave me I think for my 10th birthday. My second camera was an Minolta 35 I bought about 1969. For large prints I use Graflex Super Speed Graphic. My first digital was a Sony MVC-FD87 which used a 3.5" floppy disk to store your pictures. It was ok but film was still better at the time. My second digital was a Olympus C-2500L and it replaced the film cameras and then switch to Nikon when they came out with the D1. Now shoot with the D850 and D6. I shot a lot of sports and the hardest transition for me from film to digital was with film you tried to anticipate the action shot, digital you fired away with as may fps the camera would do. With film I have pictures that the fullback looks like he is marching rather than running. These cameras are for sale along with the my Nikon D3, D4 and D5. I would like to know what can you do with film that can't be done in digital it sure not cost per frame.