aplumpton Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <p>Storage of digital photo date can be both expensive and uncertain. After reading about the various options, the life expectancy of data placed on available systems of storage seems to be quite limited, quite apart from other pros and cons of each available system. This seems to be especially the case for CDs and DVDs, which are also old technologies (useful for temporary transfer of data), for SSD, but also for hard drives (whether conventional or RAID) and even CLOUD (no guarantee it will be fault-less and it is expensive for large amounts of data storage).</p><p>Cataloguing digital images is of course a necessity, but the need to continually recopy images and transfer them to fresh storage supports can be time-consuming and expensive. I look at my B&W negatives and know that they will be around in very good condition for a hundred years and more if well stored.</p><p>What do you suggest as a safe, long-term and inexpensive way to keep your images. Does that exist at present?</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JDMvW Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <blockquote> <p>very good condition for a hundred years and more <strong><em>if well stored</em></strong>. </p> </blockquote> <p>and of course, just as with digital media, the catch is just that - sound archiving principles. Your color slides are already faded, the color prints turned to red, and your kids will eventually move your B&W negatives into the attic where they will be subject to the "gnawing criticism of the mice" as well as to extremes of temperature and humidity.</p> <p>The only way I know to make your images last for a long time (we hope) is to post them on Photo.net. Google may well archive them, so you can achieve electronic immortality. ;)</p> <p> </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frank_scheitrowsky1 Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 Do what many institutions and governments do to archive their digital images: photograph them using film. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sanford Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <p>What is the cloud, really? Someone buys or leases a cheap, long vacant building in an all but deserted area of some formerly great American city. They install cages inside, run power to these cages, stick a security guard outside (maybe), and rents out these spaces. This is your cloud. Better to back up your data on a portable hard drive and put it in a safe deposit box. Be assured, if anyone is interested in your photographs a hundred year from now they will find a way to restore any deterioration, just like the Sistine Chapel.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
geoffs1 Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <p>I think duplication is the key. I use a set of three hard disks for my archive. I am careful that there are at least two different brands/models in each set. Unless I'm actively copying files to the third disk in the set, it is offline in careful storage (often off-site from my main computer).</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kahn Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <p>Well, nothing in life is perfect, and data storage is no exception. My solution is to back up all my photo files on two eSATA hard drives, one of which goes into our bank safe deposit box when we hit the road; and also to an portable hard drive which travels with my laptop. At the end of the year, I back everything up to DVDs which are safely stored in a nice, dark corner on a closet shelf. With this system, if one or more files is somehow corrupted, there's a good chance that it still survives on one of the other media.</p> <p>Regarding DVD, so far, so good. I have files on DVD going back to '05 that are still intact and usable. The only problem I've had so far is due to operator error: The files I burned in '04 on my long-gone XP machine are not readable because some idiot (naming no names and admitting nothing) neglected to finalize the disks.</p> <p>In any case, I figure I have about 20 years left on this planet. After that, it's somebody else's problem, right? ;-)</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kahn Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <p>I forgot to mention negative storage. Maybe it's paranoid overkill, but I place all my negatives in storage sleeves. The sleeves go inside another plastic page sleeve along with a sheet with the exposure data, etc., listed. The whole kit then goes into a manila envelope, which goes into a file hanger in a file cabinet....</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aplumpton Posted March 16, 2013 Author Share Posted March 16, 2013 <p>Thanks guys.</p> <p>Yes color slides and color film are problems (especially E-6 and C-41), unless you used Kodachrome or made dye transfer prints, ...but even then. I have 40 and 50 year B&W old negatives from my youth, other much older ones (100 years+) from long gone relatives and they are all visibly perfect today, after ordinary storage in cardboard boxes.</p> <p>I presently see only traditional and well made B&W prints, perhaps Fuji crystal archive paper color prints, or selective prints from digital data on stable paper using inks guaranteed for a few hundred years, as the only safe and economic ways to store and view desired images for a long time.</p> <p>We need a better electronic storage medium. CDs, DVDs and SSDs seem out of the question. RAID systems that overcome disk drive failure can be useful, but at some point stuff has to be copied from them, too. That, and other systems, where you have to keep copying onto other media, is a bind.</p> <p>Until a fail safe (or nearly) electronic storage is available I think my direction is to make B&W traditional prints, and, for most of my color digital work, to print out on best available papers and inks. But we are in an obsolescence medium (and society) and creative expression and safeguarding it is mainly the domain or luxury of the painter artist and the stone or metal sculptor.</p> <p>Sanford, that portable hard drive is a fragile thing and maybe data rescue from an unworkable hard drive will not be easy later or worth the candle. I am referring mainly to a young photographer (15 to 30) today who may want to review his or her images 50 or more years from now.</p> <p>William, some plastic negative sleeves are better than others. From what I have read, CDs and DVDs are not very long-lasting, should be kept out of light, and are susceptible to physical deformation (scratches. etc.) although that may not be a problem in storage. Do you use prints to safeguard best images?</p> <p>Geoff, that is about the best we have today, but I wonder (with tongue in cheek) why industry hasn't the technology to provide something much better and at reasonable cost? If the traditional chemical photo industry could develop largely permanent platinum and dye transfer prints, why cannot the electronics industry duplicate that progress in its own sector?</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kahn Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <p>Arthur, if your doubts about negative sleeves refer to the crappy ones you get from one-hour photo manglers, you're right. I use Vue All Neg Savers (<a href="http://www.vue-all.com/Negative-Savers_c4.htm">http://www.vue-all.com/Negative-Savers_c4.htm</a>), which used to be available at camera stores but probably have to ordered on-line now.</p> <p>CDs and DVDs are fragile and have to be stored carefully enough o survive mishandling and temperature extremes. Of course, the same is true for those external HDs, as well. That's one reason they're powered off most of the time, except when actually backing up files...</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JDMvW Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <p>The problem of long-term archiving is not new:</p> <blockquote> <p>There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.<br /> Ecclesiastes 1 (450 BCE or later)</p> </blockquote> <p>;)</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
starvy Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <p>I don't think the photo.net option is all that good because after your demise and the end of subscription, those images would get deleted?</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keith selmes Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <p>I don't have details to hand, but I believe archival DVD stored archivally are expected to last for one hundred years or more. Obviously we don't know for sure yet. Archival storage implies a chilled vault, although a cool dry location without refrigeration would presumably do.<br> <br> I don't think that hard drives now are particularly fragile or expensive. They can simply stop working, but if the data is on more than one, they are unlikely to all stop at once, unless they are all in the same place where there is some major destruction - as with negatives in fact. <br> <br> Hard drives in theory will eventually have corrupted data because it will simply leak, so they should be refreshed periodically. Most of us do that naturally when we upgrade systems, and although I've had drives break down, I haven't had one simply lose data while sitting still. <br> <br> The nice thing with digital is we have many options for duplication and storage, and if managed properly this should be more secure than film. I have prints and negs and plates more than 100 years old, and have been able to scan and clean these, send sets to relatives, post on Facebook etc., so if the originals are destroyed, there are many copies around the world.<br> <br> Thinking about the young photographer, my early negs, 50 years old, are the paper ones, and later instamatic, in various oddball formats. I've still got them, but I'm not sure what use they are.<br> <br> </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keith selmes Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <blockquote> <p> If the traditional chemical photo industry could develop largely permanent platinum and dye transfer prints, why cannot the electronics industry duplicate that progress in its own sector?</p> </blockquote> <p> <br> Also slightly tongue in cheek, providing us with a permanent low cost electronic storage wouldn't help sell disk drives, would it ? <br> <br> I suppose I'm about 50/50 on the chemical v digital storage thing.<br> If you have good negs carefully kept, they're always just there and you can actually see them.<br> On the other hand if you manage your digital storage properly, you can have it more accessible and secured in multiple locations.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
q.g._de_bakker Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 I'm very glad that not every [bleep] thing can be preserved for hundreds of years (or even decades), even though (all too many) people do their utmost attempting to. Sometimes, failure is the best thing that can happen to us all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eric_brody Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <p>It's someone else's quote, perhaps Ctein, but "Just because a work is irreplaceable doesn't mean it's valuable." One should develop a healthy scepticism of the value of all these huge collections of images, mine included. I now have 40,000 images on hard drives, multiply backed up, and in multiple locations. If my house burns down, I likely have more problems than my images; if the overdue (here in the Pacific Northwest) "big one" comes, I know I'll be scratching for survival, not worrying about my images. As Einstein (whose 134th birthday was the other day), World War IV will be fought with sticks and rocks. Get real folks, these are just pictures!<br> Eric</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim_Lookingbill Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <p>Has anyone watched "Storage Wars" on TV? I have.</p> <p>I never knew people just left their stuff in them for the taking when they pass away. Heck when they land in jail and have no one to take care of their stuff is just as bad. Happened to a relative of mine. Lost all of his stuff when it was put into storage for nonpayment of rent after a long stay in jail waiting for his trial.</p> <p>So when someone passes away and theirs no one to claim their stuff, the storage facility auctions it off to the highest bidder where the buyer ends up throwing most of the stuff in the trash that's of no value to him including pictures.</p> <p>Unless you plan to have relatives keep your stuff for 100 years, I don't see why we should worry about our pictures. I'ld think if preservation of your images for that long were important to you, I'ld be looking more at the people who'ld care about them as much as you do, not the storage medium.</p> <p>I've actually been contemplating this issue about keeping and preserving stuff for years on end and after I saw how easy and fast it was for my relative to lose all his stuff, I decided screw it. I'm going to enjoy what I have while I'm alive and backup to hard drive, put it in a safe deposit box and not worry about it.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kahn Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <p>If they're "just pictures", then why do these photos captivate us now?<br> <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2149899/The-American-West-youve-seen-Amazing-19th-century-pictures-landscape-chartered-time.html">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2149899/The-American-West-youve-seen-Amazing-19th-century-pictures-landscape-chartered-time.html</a></p> <p>Or, these?<br> <a href="http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2009/10/21/color-photography-from-russian-in-the-early-1900s/544/">http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2009/10/21/color-photography-from-russian-in-the-early-1900s/544/</a></p> <p>Photos mark a reference point in time in the lives of all of us. We have no way of knowing, now, what the ultimate historical value might be of a shot we take today. Only the passage of years can determine that. We need those reference points because, if we don't know where we've been, how can we know where we're going? Which is a corollary of Edmund Burke's famous quote (paraphrased): Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it.</p> <p>So, archive those shots carefully, guys - you just never know...</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim_Lookingbill Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <blockquote> <p>So, archive those shots carefully, guys - you just never know...</p> </blockquote> <p>And find you a loyal relative so those photos could some day make history after the photographer is long gone. Or have a library built in your name so you can keep them archived there.<br /> <a name="pagebottom"></a></p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eric_brody Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <p>William, I was being a bit tongue in cheek when I said they were "just pictures." If they really were trivial, I'd not likely spend most of my time and almost all of my available funds on my photography. I love what I do. Some of my work is even half decent, and some people even like it :-). But in the end, it's unlikely that my images, indeed most of our images deserve to be preserved for whatever eternity is these days. I just want folks not to be so deadly serious about the value of most of their images. I certainly treasure those of my children when they were young, and those of my ancestors, such as my great grandmother, and those of my long gone and highly missed parents; but those are but a few of the huge number of images I possess. I'd likely better spend my time identifying the 1% or so worth saving and figuring a way to adequately preserve those. As Jack Dykinga said to me once, "the trouble with digital photography is that there's too much of it."</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanKlein Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <blockquote> <p>In any case, I figure I have about 20 years left on this planet. After that, it's somebody else's problem, right? ;-)</p> </blockquote> <p>Afte we're dead, our wife's next husband will throw it all out.</p> Flickr gallery: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/albums Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alan_zinn Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <p>I just copied 200+ DVD'd and CD's (about 800GB ) to a 2T ($100,WD) hard drive the size of a deck of cards. I was dismayed to find some of my disks had physical damage as well as read errors. I could have teased out some of the data but didn't care that much. I'm not depending on a system for professional use. I expect to transfer them again when the technology changes. I believe there will always be some kind of <em>old-school</em> transfer service out there. <em>Really</em> archival security is best taken care of with redundancy. <br> I still have 100 yr. negs :-). ALL my slides not made on Kodachrome are poop.</p><div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chuck - Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 <p>I'm going to throw some cold water on the CD/DVD crowd here - I recently discovered 2 CDs from different mainstream manufacturers, burned in 2002, that had their OEM labels "curling off" (for those of you who don't know, your data is on the back of those OEM labels!!!). The CDs had been in the air-conditioned comfort of my computer room for all of those years. Fortunately, I've used multiple hard drive backups for years now. I'll never archive anything on optical discs again - and I've retro backed up anything remaining on old discs. </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charles_stobbs3 Posted March 17, 2013 Share Posted March 17, 2013 I don't spend much time perusing photos of deceased ancestors or their pets or travels so I don't know who would look at mine.. The best thing that can happen to old film is to wind up with Gene M. I don't know if he's into old CD images. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JDMvW Posted March 17, 2013 Share Posted March 17, 2013 <p>Perhaps in the future, some clever descendant of Gene M will be doing "Found CDs" for our amusement and edification.</p> <p>Come on, you know that all too many of us have ideas of being the "Mike Disfarmer" (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Disfarmer">link</a>) of the next generation. </p> <p>Similar hopes of a kind of immortality are behind so much of the detritus cluttering up our attics that was left by previous generations. Old poems, the watercolors by Aunt Gladys, ....</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrew_gardiner Posted March 17, 2013 Share Posted March 17, 2013 <blockquote> <p>I'll never archive anything on optical discs again - and I've retro backed up anything remaining on old discs.</p> </blockquote> <p>Surely any kind of round, disc format is destined for pretty speedy obsolescence. The design can only be just a hangover from vinyl records, no? USB devices or their relatives are so much more logical.</p> <p>I get far more paranoid about my film than I do about my digital archives, if only because digital files can be stored in more than one location.I suppose though the final advantage of film is that you can scan your negatives and keep a digital archive of them also.<br> <br /> At the end of the day the final demise of images isn't such a bad thing. Most of them are pretty banal, endless repetitions of each other, not even particularly meaningful to their owners, let alone anyone else. There are far to many of them around nowadays anyway.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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