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Topic: Lost Shows

30th Aug 2015, 4:37 AM
	23skidoo Member since Jul 2014 4061 Points	TopPopper wrote: There are similar cases in recorded music too, where tapes were just recorded over. I think people didn't start to realise the cultural value of these things until more recently. They probably thought no-one would ever be interested. There is at least one known case of an Elvis Presley Sun recording that was taped over. Tape was valuable and storage space (as anyone with a collection living in an apartment can tell you) is sometimes hard to come by. While I'm not a fan of digital replacing permanent physical media (too much danger of it becoming irretrievable over decades and too easy to delete) it's a shame the BBC, ITV, even NBC (which wiped most of Johnny Carson's first decade hosting Tonight) didn't have access to the technology. But here is the thing: I am under the understanding that nothing is every totally erased from magnetic tape, just as hard drives are never completely wiped (they've used tech to restore files long since "deleted" on hard drives and most security companies will tell you if you want a drive to be securely erased the only way to be sure is to hit it with a sledgehammer and throw it into a furnace). I wonder if it's possible today to go onto, say, the tape that of that Elvis performance at Sun that was recorded over, and retrieve the signal? Of course that assumes the tape itself still exists.