Of all media, I hate tape the most to the point that I've removed all sources of it in my life. No more cassette tapes fading over time in my car or for my home music, no more floppy disks or cartridge tapes losing data when travelling between sites. And no more video tapes showing dropouts and color shifts.

For data storage, flash media has become my favorite, but that has not stopped me from occasionally running over one with a rolling chair or otherwise crushing them. Their diminutive size works against them in these cases, as well as when it comes time to keep track of them. (I've also lost several SD cards on various trips.)

For archiving, and purchasing pre-formatted data, CDs and DVDs are a large improvement, but they are not invulnerable either. One particular album I like, I've had to purchase 3 copies of. The first one was stolen, the second one was scratched beyond all hope of reading, and the third one was warped by heat (luckily after I ripped mp3s of it). My music collection now lives on various computer harddrives where I listen to it. But I still tend to scratch up disks from time to time.

Thanks to Make: Blog for the link to Instructables, there may be an answer. Brasso metal polish.

I'll have to give this a try.