Is 'digital' copying immune from quality issues?

Hello!
This is something I've been thinking about ever since I started 'cloning' and making backups to my external HD. Is cloning (and backup) an EXACT copy - in terms of quality - as the original? You know - when you record from an audio cassette the copy is never going to be 100% the quality of the original right? And every subsequent copy from that copy will deteriorate further and so on. It's the same thing with taking photocopies - the copy never looks as good as the original. And if you were to photocopy the copy, it just gets worse, right? Now that's the problem with 'analog' reproduction, but can the same thing happen with digital reproduction? Or is it totally immune?
Would love to hear some informed answers on this. Thanks.
Cheers, Steve.

Restoring a starup disk from a clone should work OK provided the disk it was cloned from didn't contain any errors or incompatibilities: it's probablyl safer fo do a clean install of everything - if you can - but of course it's more time-consuming. However the issue here isn't the accuracy of the digital coping process, but what state the clone itself is in.
As to JPEGs and MP3s: when the file is created from the uncompressed original the process throws away some of the information. If you make a direct digital copy of the compressed file the copy will be exactly the same as the file it was made from. However if you open a compressed file and then re-save it you run the risk of throwing away even more information -though on the whole it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference as long as you stick to the same process - i.e. don't open an MP3 file and then resave it as AAC, for example. I don't know how serious the results would be, but it's worth avoiding where possible.

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