How safe is a safe deposit box?

[Delicateflower]

I am very anxious about our video tapes of the kids growing up. It's prohibitive to make copies, both in time and cost, so the copies are not the same resolution as the original, so I want a really safe place to keep them. Are safe deposit boxes fire and disaster safe? What about humidity and that sort of thing?  Our photos are backed up all over the place, but these videos are really irreplacable.

[Caneel]

I used to work at a bank and was in the safety deposit vault all the time.

Where I worked, the vaults were subject to the same heating and cooling as the rest of the building.  The huge door was open all day and the heat and ac would circulate through.

As far as safety, the vaults are massive so I think it would take a truly epic or tragic event to destroy the vault.  I would think it would be fire/heat safe too since a bank would have a security system linked to a central monitoring station, meaning a fire wouldn't/shouldn't burn the amount of time it would take to damage a vault.

Most boxes are rather small so it might be sort of expensive to rent a box large enough to hold a lot of tapes.

[K'sMama]

Originally Posted by Caneel 

I used to work at a bank and was in the safety deposit vault all the time.

Where I worked, the vaults were subject to the same heating and cooling as the rest of the building.  The huge door was open all day and the heat and ac would circulate through.

As far as safety, the vaults are massive so I think it would take a truly epic or tragic event to destroy the vault.  I would think it would be fire/heat safe too since a bank would have a security system linked to a central monitoring station, meaning a fire wouldn't/shouldn't burn the amount of time it would take to damage a vault.

Most boxes are rather small so it might be sort of expensive to rent a box large enough to hold a lot of tapes.

[K'sMama]

Arghhh!  I'm not sure what is up with my post above?!?!?!  It keeps quoting the post above me, but won't let me add text and when I edit it, it isn't actually changing.

What it should say is:

We used to have a box and it was not big enough to hold even one tape, let alone several.  It was less than half an inch high, about as wide as a passport and quite long.  AFAIK all of the boxes at that bank were the same size.

[~Adorkable~]

the bigger issue is that those tapes will degrade regardless of where you store them, i would get them digitized and saved in a few places or at some point you will want them and they will not be playable or at least a lot less so.

[larablue]

Digitalize them definitely.You can than store then easily on different hard disks (one could be in a safe deposit box).

All the tapes of my childhood were destroyed over time.

[achildofthe80s]

I've been using Roxio VHS to DVD to digitize all our old stuff. You can hook it from your computer directly to a VCR or into the camcorder (for those with the small tapes). There are copies of the program with the cords on Ebay for as low at $10 to $30.