Windows 10 ruining archived items?

[MadRat]

Comparing my individual files still stored on a WinXP machine that hasn't been turned on for several years, I noticed the pictures have relative few if any defects. Compared to the copies on my Win10 machine that has actually made various jumps from Win7 to an archival drive and back to the large multiterabyte current drive on this machine, the WinXP are noticeably better. It is especially noticeable on black backgrounds, with random lighter blemishes on the newer copies of the same files. I'm really surprised the data would degrade. I've noticed similar behavior with MP3's with older copies being cleaner and the newest copies having a dull hiss at higher volume levels. I'm not sure if this is a side effect of bit drift or some kind of watermarking being done by the OS. These files have only been stored on NTFS partitions, and never on FAT32. And two of three were done with parity set. I didn't seem to lose any quality going from non-parity to parity and back initially. And I hadn't noticed the degradation until I used a picture for the background and began to question if there were dead screen pixels.

Has anyone else noticed the pictures in their archives becoming blemished over time?

And the ones that do notice, is there an explanation why?

 

[Ketchup]

It sounds like nothing more than different audio drivers and color management changes ( changing monitors, video cards, and input type could also cause change here). Actual data degredation would be much more noticeable and would be caused by a failing drive or bad memory.

 

[Jaskalas]

My old .jpg files from a 2004-2005 appear to be in flawless condition.

 

[XavierMace]

Actual data degredation would be much more noticeable and would be caused by a failing drive or bad memory.

THIS. This is digital data. We aren't talking about photos that have been in the sun too long.

I've got plenty of 10 year old media files on my file server that are fine.

 

[pjmssn]

Same here, when I see degradation in pictures, usually half of the picture or a significant fraction of it is gone or it has large artifacts. Try to look at the pictures on a different computer or on your smartphone.