We're facing "a generation of lost images"

[James Fee]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.popphoto.com/article.asp?section_id=4&article_id=1057' target='_blank'>http://www.popphoto.com/article.asp?section_id=4&article_id=1057</a><br /><br /></div>"<i>Where will your digital photos be in 20 years? Or 10? Or even five? It’s a question those of us who are firing away with our digital cameras really have to think about. And act on. When it comes to long-term preservation, one thing is obvious—those images won’t be on your computer’s hard drive. Even if an all-out crash doesn’t wipe them away (as happened on my image-filled laptop last year), chances are you won’t still have that computer, any more than you’re now typing on an Osborne, Kaypro, or Atari. The diligent among us back up with CDs or DVDs. We burn them ourselves or have a photofinisher do it when we drop off our memory cards. It’s smart and easy. A typical CD can store 600 5-megapixel images; a single DVD, seven times that number. But it’s only a matter of years until these media become what the music world’s 8-tracks are to today’s MP3s. In the future, we might have to prowl yard sales or eBay, or some other land of bygone technology, to find a machine that can handle antiquated CDs or DVDs.</i>"<br /><br />What would happen to you if turned on your computer tonight and your hard drive was fried? I back up my photos on DVDs, but I am always worried about how long that format will last. If I stick them in the attic and forget about them for 20 years, will they be dust in a plastic case? Of course Fuji Film says print them out, but inkjet printers don't archive well so are we to send our photos to the photo lab? <br /><br />So what do we do about this problem? Does anyone have a solution?

[that_kid]

Welcome to the flip side of digital. I keep my photo's and things backed up in two different places (350 miles apart) but I also worry about if those files can be read in 20 years or so. This also happens with my studio recordings, sure I can edit and mix and do what I like but unlike tape that can last decades with little degrading digital is not that forgiving. A loss in high end or something like that can be corrected with tape but a corrupt file means you've lost your whole track. My mom and dad have photo's taken over 30 years ago that look good and I'm really concerned if I can say that 30 years from now. Backups are good but if you have nothing to read that backup file or the files that have been restored than what good is it?

[Jason Dunn]

I think this is a Chicken Little ("They sky is falling, the sky is falling!") scenario. It's much ado about nothing.

Two things tell me this:

1) If you back up your photos, you won't lose them. You can't back up physical photos nearly as easily.

2) While it might be true that an optical drive 30 years from now might not be able to read a CD or DVD from today, the reality is that the next few generations will. So if, five years from now, we're all using Blue-Ray DVD burners, we should re-archive our content from CD to the newer format, and keep doing that over the years, so we're always up to date.

[The Yaz]

When I upload photos from my camera to my desktop, I will go through and delete the imperfect shots. The remainders are then organized for printing. I print 5x7 prints of these shots, plastic cover the sheets, and then place in a book tabbed with the directory the files are stored under.

I used to be more laid back about backing up the files till my hard drive freaked on me in September. Luckily I was able to rerecognize it and transfer all of the important files to a new hard drive. Now I backup monthly to clean dvd-r's.

I figure that at worst case, I could always scan the backup print if I totally lost the original files.

Steve 8)

[Doug Johnson]

Backup, backup, backup... www.fileback-pc.com is my choice.

In addition to several backups (4 that i can think of) on my local network, I also backup over a VPN on the Internet to a remote PC every night, and burn DVDs occasionally.

I'm not too worried about not being able to open the files years from now. It isn't like JPEG, BMP, or TIFF will go away before some other suitable replacement is found, and the images can be converted at that time.

We are in a new situation that is different from what we have encountered in the past. You can make perfect copies of digital images. But you can't do the same thing with film and analog technologies. Moving a digital image from one form of storage to another does not result in any degradation so long as the image is not re-compressed.

[James Fee]

So if, five years from now, we're all using Blue-Ray DVD burners, we should re-archive our content from CD to the newer format, and keep doing that over the years, so we're always up to date.
That could be the only way, but how many people do you think will actually do this?

[Tim Williamson]

What's the cheapest backup program that can save multiple versions of files out there for desktop PCs?

[Doug Johnson]

What's the cheapest backup program that can save multiple versions of files out there for desktop PCs?
I don't know about cheap, but FileBack PC is pretty inexpensive and does this quite well. (www.fileback-pc.com)

[Jason Dunn]

What's the cheapest backup program that can save multiple versions of files out there for desktop PCs?

I don't know if it's the cheapest, but I use www.handybackup.com which allows you to time-stamp your backups and keep multiple versions of each backup...

Honestly, don't look for a cheap backup solution, look for the best one. :-)

[Chris Gohlke]

So if, five years from now, we're all using Blue-Ray DVD burners, we should re-archive our content from CD to the newer format, and keep doing that over the years, so we're always up to date.
That could be the only way, but how many people do you think will actually do this?

Thats what I do. Had been backing up to CD since about 98 and moved to DVD earlier this year. Years from now, I will switch to what ever the new media is. Also, I bet if JPEG starts to go out of style, there will be a batch program that I can use to convert in bulk my files from jpeg to the newer format.

Additionally, I backup my pictures from home and leave them at my office on a regular basis. Less frequently I take a backup to my saftey deposit box. If disaster takes out my home/office/safety dep box, the fact that I lost all of my pictures will not be my biggest problem.

[that_kid]

If disaster takes out my home/office/safety dep box, the fact that I lost all of my pictures will not be my biggest problem.

True, very true and the moral of the story is to have as much fault tolerance for your data as possible (as log as the data is worth it).

[James Fee]

Well I was thinking more outside us here at Digital Media Thoughts.

[Jason Dunn]

Well I was thinking more outside us here at Digital Media Thoughts.

Sure, this is an issue that might become a huge problem down the road, but that's why people like us have to look out for the people that aren't quite as geeky. ;-)

[[email protected]]

There's a key difference between photos and many other types of data you store on your computer. Photos are irreplaceable. I have photographs handed down to me from my great grandmother, meaning that they are from the childhood of photography. Gets you thinking doesn't it?

[Mojo Jojo]

So... got a question for all the people that are worried.

Would you pay a service, say Digital Media Storage &copy; where you can upload your files and for each Gig you pay say... 10 bucks a year where they guarantee your storage in their original format.

And for say another 5 dollars an hour of CPU time, convert from one format to another if possible?

Just some thoughts.

[James Fee]

I wouldn't trust any service to hold important data.

I can just picture them sending me an alert to an old email address that doesn't work anymore telling me I have 5 days to recover my images.

The only safe way is how Jason described it. Re-evaluate your archive medium every 5 years. Its not just digital either. My Dad has tons of slides he took in the 70's that have started to degenerate. No matter how you archive, you need to keep up on it.

[wigglesworth]

I backup all my Photo's, videos, and MP3's to a "Maxtor external 250 GB" Hardive. This is stored in a safe deposit box.

When the HD is in the safety deposit box I back up any new material to a CD just in case something happens to my computer before I have a chance back up to my external HD.

[aro]

First, my primary concern about preservation is not photos but the medias that contain the pictures. Will the media structure(plastic and metal) will be corrupted in 10, 20 , 40 years. If the media(cd, dvd) hold its tresors for that amount of time with no friles I don't care about media COMPATIBILITY. I let the fun to my kids in 40 years to find a way!
I recently found some 16 mm family films that I've converted into digital
media( I will also keep films tapes!..) I was glad that the media was still good(even if my father was a poor movie maker!..)except for about 10% of the tape that was twisted.

Also even so if in twenty years, I loose some pictures-movies with the transfer (media corrupton)it won't be a disaster. I always take more pix than I need and I keep them all(even the ones my wife ask me to delete!..) I think(I may be wrong) that today with digital cameras people are taking more pictures for each event they attend since they are only limited in memory space not in picture numbers.

I use to backup my pictures since I got my first Digital camera on cds. I save my pictures into folders-librairies. When a folder tops 700mb, I backing it up to a cd. I have now a DVD(DL) burner but kept my backup system because anyway it would takes too much time to top 4.7(or 8.4) and I would not want to loose a big chunk of pix with any crashing drive.
So I backup on cd at each 700mb of pix-movies and update 2 DVD-RW.
Also I have all my stuff on an external 2.5" hard disk that is always in the closet.

Finally, whenever the technology change I will transfer the picture-movies from the present format to the next. Syquest to CD to DVD to BlueRay?
Who know?

aro

[rlobrecht]

I take a backup to my saftey deposit box. This is a great idea. Maybe I should get a safety deposit box.

[Andy Manea]

I make prints of very few pictures, and - like some others have said here - I would port my old CDs and DVDs to whatever new media would replace them. I think a big difference to the generations before us is that mostly prints of really well-shot pictures will survive on paper (if you do make prints, you pick the best of the shots) and that there will be pictures for any event (I always have some camera on me now)...while some generations back you'd only take out the camera for really important things.

I see a real tragedy in the way we preserve written documents, though. Email and SMS have replaced most private correspondence around here so no more old (love-) letters for your descendants :(
I wish there was a way to keep SMSes - other than typing them up by hand to print them out later.

[Jason Dunn]

This is a great idea. Maybe I should get a safety deposit box.

My local bank has a 50 year waiting list (actually, it's so long they don't even have a waiting list) for the bigger safety deposit boxes that are large enough to store a CD/DVD. So what I've done instead is get a fireproof safe and I keep a 20 GB hard drive in there with all my data. This would make a good front-page post actually...

[wigglesworth]

Jason Dunn So what I've done instead is get a fireproof safe and I keep a 20 GB hard drive in there with all my data.
Jason, do you have a ordinary "fireSafe" or a "Media Safe"? the difference between the two are.

1) Fire safe, this is the type mostly sold in stores and are relativaly inexpensive. They are intended to hold papers, jewelery ect, paper begins to char at a tempeture of 450º F. To prevent damage to the papers inside during a fire the interior of the safe will not get any hotter than 350 degrees thus protecting your documents.

2) Media Safe Usually a special order in most stores and a lot more expensive. It is designed specifically for media such as floppies, CD/DVD's, Hard Drives ect. Damage to computer media occurs as low as 125º F. During a fire this type of a safe will maintain a interior temperature as low as 125°F and 80% humidity. Any type of media in a regular Fire safe will end up warping due to the interior tempeture being higher than 125°F

You may know this all ready, but it was a bit of usfull information I picked up when working at Staples.

[wigglesworth]

I just finished checking out the Sentry safes website and came across a better description than what I provided

CDs, diskettes, audio and video cassettes, photo negatives, X-ray films and microfiche need more fire and humidity protection than provided by Sentry's standard Fire-Safe® product line. Damage to these types of media may begin at temperatures above 125°F as compared to paper products that may withstand heat up to 350°F.

[Chris Gohlke]

This is a great idea. Maybe I should get a safety deposit box.

My local bank has a 50 year waiting list (actually, it's so long they don't even have a waiting list) for the bigger safety deposit boxes that are large enough to store a CD/DVD. So what I've done instead is get a fireproof safe and I keep a 20 GB hard drive in there with all my data. This would make a good front-page post actually...

I too waited for years for an appropriately sized box. You could just swap storage with a friend. You store their backups and they store yours. The further apart you are the better, that way less of a chance of the same disaster effecting you both. Anyone want to send some backups down here to Florida :wink:

[Jason Dunn]

Jason, do you have a ordinary "fireSafe" or a "Media Safe"? the difference between the two are.

How interesting...! I didn't know about that. I have a Sentry 1170...(Googles)....

Ok, so that safe doesn't keep CDs safe. Let's see which one does:

http://www.sentrysafe.com/Series.asp?r=5

$442 USD MRSP???? 8O :roll:

Ok, looks like it's time to swap storage space with a friend!

[theone3]

Because there are so many digital camera users around who are all backing up to CDs and DVDs, I don't think finding a suitable player will be a problem. After all, people still have record players, don't they? And the JPEG format is so standard now, that I doubt it will be allowed to die out entirely. There's always going to be an 'importer' somewhere.

And RE: Data Degrading while it may be an issue it is a very gradual process. If you take out a disc and it dosent work, it's still retrievable by pros for a few years (as I understand it).

[Chris Gohlke]

Does anyone know if gun safes are media safe? You can get a very large one with shelves and everything for $500-$600. If they can keep ammo cool, I think CDs would be OK.

[SassKwatch]

2) While it might be true that an optical drive 30 years from now might not be able to read a CD or DVD from today, the reality is that the next few generations will. So if, five years from now, we're all using Blue-Ray DVD burners, we should re-archive our content from CD to the newer format, and keep doing that over the years, so we're always up to date.
I'm not nearly as concerned about the type of media the photos are stored on as I am the file formats utilized for storage remaining viable in the future.

E.g., almost every camera mfr out there has their own propietary version of the 'RAW' format. Even if a shooter has been diligent about keeping pics stored on the media type of choice of the time, will there be s/w that can read some (any?) of these formats 20-30 yr down the line.(?) Which is a shame because RAW is about as close to a 'digital negative' as things get. And the thought of my 'negatives' not being readable 20, 30, 50, or a 100 yr down the road (assuming anyone would want to :)) is a little disheartening. Because I shoot almost exclusively in RAW, I also save every image I value in .psd format just on the assumed (!Danger!) likelihood that format stands as good a chance of probable survival as any....if only because Adobe will keep it so. But even that relies on Adobe's continued existence.

Even venerable formats such as jpeg....who knows how long there will be s/w out there capable of reading that format.(?) If you're time horizon only goes out 15-20 yr, then *probably* you'll be ok. Beyond that, it's a crap shoot, IMO.

Methinks there is more to this concern than a Chicken Little scenario.

[Chris Gohlke]

Even venerable formats such as jpeg....who knows how long there will be s/w out there capable of reading that format.(?) If you're time horizon only goes out 15-20 yr, then *probably* you'll be ok. Beyond that, it's a crap shoot, IMO.

Methinks there is more to this concern than a Chicken Little scenario.

But these standard formats will probably not disappear overnight. So unless you are locking them away in a time capsule for 100 years you should be fine as long as you re-evaluate every 5 years or so. If you see a standard is disappearing, you should have time to convert before it disappears.

[wigglesworth]

Does anyone know if gun safes are media safe? You can get a very large one with shelves and everything for $500-$600. If they can keep ammo cool, I think CDs would be OK

It will not work the interior of a fire safe will not get any hotter than 1400°F, and digital media is affected at tempertures above the 125 degree range. Different material are going to have different tolerance ranges.

[Suhit Gupta]

I saw a demo of the MyLifeBits project today - http://www.research.microsoft.com/barc/MediaPresence/MyLifeBits.aspx - very nice. It doesn't solve the hard-drive-go-bye-bye scenario, but helps grab a lot of information about your life and put it together. Hmm, reminds of the doon to be released movie The Final Cut.

Suhit

[James Fee]

I guess for the the issue is what will we be finding in people's attics when they die? No longer will we be able to look though photos that have been archived in shoe boxes.

Well unless grandma remembers to re-evaluate her archive situation every 5 years. :roll:

[Chris Gohlke]

But if enough people are still using a particular format, it will survive. If enough people have archived jpegs when it goes away, then it simply won't go away. Someone will make a program that can read it. I don't think a format will die unless most people want it to.

[wyrdred]

I too worry about this ... my computer is definitely aging. I don't have the money to keep up with technology. I back-up my photos to CD and hope (pray) that when I want them again I will be able to retrieve them. My ink jet printer just doesn't cut it for printing pictures. Recently, I started uploading my pictures to www.fotki.com. I have been pretty satisfied with the usability of the site and the ability to share my images with friends and family. But, I still worry about uploading my photos to this site and then god-forbid the site evaporates. Oh well.... I will just have to cope if I lose my images.

[dave_p_1]

Methinks it's much ado about nothing.

Some recommendations based on my experience in IT disaster recovery planning.

First, never delete files from your hard drive. A backup is just that, a backup. It is for recovery, not storage. Storage is cheap. I still have files that I transferred from 5 1/4" floppies on my hard drives. In the short term, put your old drives into your new PC in addition to the drives it comes with. In the long term, any new computing device you get should have enough storage for all your old files - take the time to transfer them.

Second, consider buying a PC that supports RAID mirroring. This writes each file to two hard drives allowing you to recover from a drive failure. If you are professionally dependent on your pictures, consider setting up a file server.

Third, as has been suggested, review your formats periodically. I would guess there are programs which will batch convert any format you care to name into any other format. Certainly if a major format like JPEG is replaced by JPEGX, there will be batch conversion programs. Use them on all your old files, even if you have no clue what they are.

Fourth, backup and store your backups off-site or in a media safe. Where off-site is will depend on your own assessment of the value of the pictures. Remember, the backups exist in case the building containing your hard drives burns down. A detached shed or a drawer in your office may be enough for you. As far as safes, regular safes are designed to keep people out and do nothing against fire. Fire resistant safes are designed to keep the interior temperature under the ignition point of paper (which as all SF fans know is Farenheit 451). Only a media safe will keep the interior at a temperature that will not harm CDs and DVDs.

Finally, remember, 95% of what you have will mean nothing to anyone after you're dead and they may not want to spend the time and money to find the 5% that does. Far better to select the 5% yourself and annotate them. Unfortunately, the easy to use photo album programs will probably be obsolete long before the photo formats are. I would recommend using HTML or simple TXT files.

Dave

[uhoo]

I take a backup to my saftey deposit box. This is a great idea. Maybe I should get a safety deposit box.

Well, maybe not http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/10/06/deposit.boxes.ap/

I guess you can't take anything for granted these days.

Anyway, I keep my photos on SD cards. Use 'em like film, and they pretty hardy too. Though I don't know if there'll be readers in 20 years, CompactFlash has survived pretty well though

[Tim Williamson]

I take a backup to my saftey deposit box. This is a great idea. Maybe I should get a safety deposit box.

Well, maybe not http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/10/06/deposit.boxes.ap/

I guess you can't take anything for granted these days.

Anyway, I keep my photos on SD cards. Use 'em like film, and they pretty hardy too. Though I don't know if there'll be readers in 20 years, CompactFlash has survived pretty well though

Wow that would REALLY suck...

[alanjrobertson]

With each new PC I've bought/built the HDD has rocketed in size. I therefore just temporarily attach the old drive to the new PC, copy the entire thing to a folder on the new HDD and recycle the old PC. I then sort the contents out into new folders and delete old useless stuff (e.g. old windows folders).

I've also just got a Maxtor OneTouch 250GB USB2/Firewire drive and it backs up both HDDs in my current machine every night at 22.30 :) I bought my parents a digital camera last Christmas, so got them to get an 80GB OneTouch last week so all their photos are also being backed up. I also swap backups between their house and mine every few months so we both have an off-site backup :D