Long Term Photo Storage

[p38arover]

The recent theft of hillbilliywheelchair's computers and bblaze's loss of his camera brings to mind the subject of long term storage of digital pics.

Many of the Kodak gold CDs I burned less than 10 years ago are now unreadable so what can one do to protect digital images (oddly enough, data tapes I have that are much, much older are still perfectly readable).

I've seen archival CDs for sale but hoiw can we be sure they will last even our lifetime, let alone the claimed 300 years.

Archival CDs don't have the capacity for storing many images and they are about $10 each so they aren't a viable option for most of us.

What do you use to back up your pics?

[rmp]

http://www.aulro.com/afvb/camera-corner/82010-how-techniques-explained-members-tutorial.html

covers what I do. As for the long-term, simply put them on multiple hard disks. At $130 for 1Tb you can't go wrong. Every few years swap the disks over to new ones. Don't rely on CDs or the like through the ages. Right now USB2 rules, in 10 years time it won't and you'll need new connectors, so keep updating.

It's worth it, pix are priceless.

[p38arover]

Thanks Robert. I missed that thread.

I hadn't realised 1Tb drives were so cheap now!

You wanna see what we paid for 5Mb drives in the 80s!

[rmp]

Yes, I recall the days of 5.25" floppies, the wonders of a 720Mb 3.5 and then a 1.44Mb, emm386.exe, Windows 3.0, WordPerfect 5.1, WordStar before that.....

At the moment, storage prices are dropping quicker than camera image sizes, which is good. There is a logical limit to just how big an image people need, and for me 15Mp is plenty, whereas disk storage continues to grow apace. But there's no similar limit to disk size.

S'funny, people used to look at my SLRs and ask The Number Two Most Popular Question -- "how many megapixels is that" and the answer of 8 used to impress. Now they're shocked because their little p&s is 12!

[p38arover]

So true!

My 6Mp Pentax *istD DSLR camera is ample for my needs. I don't do photography for publication and the camera is relatively small and light (for a DSLR).

[inside]

Don't discount the web either for long term storage like Flickr, Picasa etc. You may not want to upload your high res pics but even lower res versions for a "just in case" might save you one day.

[abaddonxi]

Worthwhile looking into online backup as well. Doesn't cost much and subscriptions to two services should safeguard.

Other thing is that the security is pretty strong, so you don't have to worry about that pic going public.:angel:

[p38arover]

I did that and just found SnapFish - owned by Hewlett Packard. I expect they would be reputable.

[rmp]

Other thing is that the security is pretty strong, so you don't have to worry about that pic going public.:angel:

hmmmm

[stirlsilver]

If you are going to use online storage avoid anything that is free, because you never know when they might simply vanish. Use a paid service for the backup of your photos.

I myself use smugmug which I have to pay an annual fee for. And as a bonus you get some cool gallery features. The website is SmugMug Photo & Video Sharing. You look better here. (http://www.smugmug.com)

[rmp]

Don't trust any one place with your backups, paid or free.

You can believe me now, or believe me later, eventually you'll lose data and whether that's a disaster or a minor inconvience depends entirely how well you've prepared.

[sashadidi]

The recent theft of hillbilliywheelchair's computers and bblaze's loss of his camera brings to mind the subject of long term storage of digital pics.

Many of the Kodak gold CDs I burned less than 10 years ago are now unreadable so what can one do to protect digital images (oddly enough, data tapes I have that are much, much older are still perfectly readable).

I've seen archival CDs for sale but hoiw can we be sure they will last even our lifetime, let alone the claimed 300 years.

Archival CDs don't have the capacity for storing many images and they are about $10 each so they aren't a viable option for most of us.

What do you use to back up your pics?
Talked a while back to a guy in the New Zeland National Library/Archive, they are thinking all the time about this, he always says print out some photos at least you have somethingto look at and that can be worked on, their policy was to at least make a phyiscal print at first and they were(at the time) still thinking on this as P38 says, you cannot always read discs etc in the future, guess it might be the same with my video camera uses hard drives etc, I still have my old tapes from the previous one and keep the old camera so I can et leat play them and I also put them to DVD but who knows how long that will work for , maybe DVD s will be replaced by something!!

[rmp]

What you don't do is copy to one electronic media then forget about it assuming it'll be there for generations to come.

What you should do is keep transferring the data to current versions of media over the years. The cost and trouble to do this is small compared to the value of the data.

Imagine if you'd kept everything on 5.25" disks. Try finding a drive for that now.

[Pedro_The_Swift]

I imagine Ron would have a few of those squirreled away,,
in that Tardis Garage of his,,

good info Robert.:cool:

[dullbird]

you could always just put them in an album :p

[mfc]

We realy are a hell of a lot better of in this regard than we were 25 years ago.
Any one with any sense has a backup of there data.hard to backup a negative,harder again with transparancies.Were spoilt for choice. the issue of obsolesence isnt a new thing either.

[p38arover]

Old colour transparencies fade and lose colour (as a number of mine have done despite being stored in slide boxes in a cool dark cupboard).

Yet monochrome pics taken by photographers well over 100 years ago are still good..

[cartm58]

We have clay tablets and Papayrus reed scrolls, we have ship logs and manifests from the 15th century but greatest danger for today historians is the electronic storage and transmission of data between people.

Electronic stuff disappears when technology updated and everyone saves the data storage medium but not the machine to read it, electronic data storage degrades over time same as any other storage system.

Old adaga of back up, back up and back up again applies

Storage should be multi copies and distributed you can have house fire and back up disappears but you can retrieve off site storage from friend or family. Internet storage providers can have storage issues and even people like NASA re used historic video to re tape new material when spending cuts were applied and lots of stuff were lost or they can go bust or simply disappear when they lose market popularity.

The other thing to consider is who is going to look after it when your gone, consider leaving it to family friends or leave it to local historical society or the National Archives