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Collecting Old Time Radio Safely: USB Thumbdrives and External Hard Drives

The Old Time Radio hobby is about collecting, storing, and sharing a great deal of audio content. In the beginning, this meant collecting fragile acetate or shellac discs that were often too delicate to be played more than once or twice. When the technology became available, these programs were saved on magnetic tape. This meant that in the Seventies and Eighties, a hobbyist might have bookshelves filled with dozens if not hundreds of cassette tapes. And then came digital. Once a show was saved as an MP3 file, a huge number of them could be saved and shared on a Compact Disc or DVD. This saves even more space, but optical drives (CDs) are less common in modern home computers and laptops.  A single USB thumb drive or external hard drive can hold terabytes of data. Solid-state devices such as flash drives and external SSD drives have no moving parts to wear out, which means your data is much safer from loss with faster access.  However, there are inherent dangers to the USB form...