Delete or not delete

I have a whole box of software and CDR day back to early 90s, and I was thinking of simply ripping all the personal data and simply throw all the disc away since I don't use these ancient software anymore. However, I may need to change my mind.

It started when I tried to open some old Word document that I wrote back in the college, and Microsoft Word 2007 BLOCKED me from doing so, saying that the old version of word document needs to be read by the old import engine, but the old import engine has security problem. To put the long story short, I may need to reinstall the OLD VERSION of office (like, maybe Office 97?) to read my document.

Now there's an incentive for me to keep some of the old application. The question is ... which applications to keep? I sure don't want to keep all 200+ CDR discs just for the sake of some old data files. But then those data files preserve my precious memory.

Sigh, what a dilemma....