I have stored mine in archivable-type pages, then placed in three-ring binders according subject. I can pull out slides taken almost 30 years ago and they still look as good as the day they were processed.
chez wrote:
Why throw them out. There is no memories going down the drain with those slides? Why did you take them in the 1st place?
When I bought my first Dslr, I scanned all the slides that I thought were worthy. As the result, I nver look at the slides again. Now all my pics are saved on hard disks.
Even the DVDs are obsolete. I may do away with them to. I just bought a 1500 gigs external HD, that would contain all my pictures up to now and will be enough for few more years.
Sofar all pics are backup x3
nugeny wrote:
When I bought my first Dslr, I scanned all the slides that I thought were worthy. As the result, I nver look at the slides again. Now all my pics are saved on hard disks.
Even the DVDs are obsolete. I may do away with them to. I just bought a 1500 gigs external HD, that would contain all my pictures up to now and will be enough for few more years.
Sofar all pics are backup x3
OK. That makes sense. I would also throw them out if you already digitized them.
nugeny wrote:
When I bought my first Dslr, I scanned all the slides that I thought were worthy. As the result, I nver look at the slides again. Now all my pics are saved on hard disks.
Even the DVDs are obsolete. I may do away with them to. I just bought a 1500 gigs external HD, that would contain all my pictures up to now and will be enough for few more years.
Sofar all pics are backup x3
Hardrives on average have a lifespan of less than 10 years and then they don't become "obsolete", they just crash and burn. A single hardrive is not a good long term storage option no matter how big it is.
nathanlake wrote:
Hardrives on average have a lifespan of less than 10 years and then they don't become "obsolete", they just crash and burn. A single hardrive is not a good long term storage option no matter how big it is.
Good that you have the same healthy skeptical attitude as mine. My second hard drive has every thing as the first. But it has twice the capacity as the first so it continue to backup the new informations. When the second one is full, it would contain all the info of the first hard disk plus all the new info. Now I have the third one that will contain all the info of the first and second hard disk and continue to back up the new info and so on . So all of my files will always be available in the last up to date disk.
The nice thing about all this is, the newest one is also the smallest one, the fatest one and the one that have most of the storage capacity. and I may say it is the least expensive one.
I'm keeping mine, the ones that were nice. Especially family type photos. I work in the photo industry as my "day" job, and there's just NO WAY that I'm depending on digital for archivability. A lot of people are going to discover that the family photos they took 40 years ago no longer exist on the CD or whatever storage they used. The b&w photos of my grandparents' baby portraits from 1894 are still very scannable, as are the 120 negs my grandmother took with her Brownie in 1929. The Kodachrome my dad took of us in the 1950s look like they were shot last week. Anyone here seriously think digital files will be readable 70 years from now? I don't.
Already some digital files from just eight years ago are unreadable. The problem is not only corruption of the file, but also the improbability that formats from 2005 will be even able to be read in 2075. The original Kodak photo disks are now longer able to be read. I make archival prints of anything I want saved, especially key family photos.
Two23 wrote:
Already some digital files from just eight years ago are unreadable. The problem is not only corruption of the file, but also the improbability that formats from 2005 will be even able to be read in 2075. The original Kodak photo disks are now longer able to be read. I make archival prints of anything I want saved, especially key family photos.
Kent in SD
I would keep the 1894, 1929, 1950 not for the photos but as antics, priceless.
As for compatibility, corruption...well, one should not backup once and forget about it. As said. my first external HD was 500 gigs. The second twice that capacity, that contain every thing that was on the first. Now my third one is x3 capacity and 1/3 the size of the first.
This last one again has every thing that was in the 1st and second disk. So the files are constanly updated and available.
Of course, one can't keep on doing that, but again I will not live forever. Up to the next generation to find the solution. Trust me, they will. We are doing better than our grand parents, our children doing better than we do, and so we are marching on with the progress.
nathanlake wrote:
Hardrives on average have a lifespan of less than 10 years and then they don't become "obsolete", they just crash and burn. A single hardrive is not a good long term storage option no matter how big it is.
Hi - every so often just copy on to whatever's the new storage medium.
If you want REALLY long term decent archive DVD-RAM (yes it's still alive and kicking) will do it -- guaranteed lifetime > 200 years, Read write cycles > 100,000
double side 9.4GB so you shouldn't need too many of these even for 1 TB archive (100)
Blu Ray might be worth looking at also for archive as these are aound 50GB per disc so you would need a lot less - but 100 DVD's in a box somewhere don't take up much space.
I'd hate to throw away 25,000 pics - I can't believe they are ALL bad.
At the worst put them on ebay -- just don't bin them before archiving.
Kyle Yates wrote:
Hi - every so often just copy on to whatever's the new storage medium.
If you want REALLY long term decent archive DVD-RAM (yes it's still alive and kicking) will do it -- guaranteed lifetime > 200 years, Read write cycles > 100,000
double side 9.4GB so you shouldn't need too many of these even for 1 TB archive (100)
Blu Ray might be worth looking at also for archive as these are aound 50GB per disc so you would need a lot less - but 100 DVD's in a box somewhere don't take up much space.
I'd hate to throw away 25,000 pics - I can't believe they are ALL bad.
At the worst put them on ebay -- just don't bin them before archiving.
"every so often just copy on to whatever's the new storage medium."
That is the way to do. Blue ray might be an option, but external hard disk with increasing capacity, higher speed and smaller in size ---it shrinks every time you get a new one---can't be beat.
When I look for a picture , I love to look for it in one place (one hard dish)>
cheers.
Bob
nathanlake wrote:
Hardrives on average have a lifespan of less than 10 years and then they don't become "obsolete", they just crash and burn. A single hardrive is not a good long term storage option no matter how big it is.
The only practical solution is continuous migration to new media as it becomes available. Of course as your digital library grows migration will be come more and more of a chore.
In 20 years it is very unlikely that any computers will be able to still talk to USB or Firewire drives.
John> In 20 years it is very unlikely that any computers will be able to still talk to USB or Firewire drives.
Thankfully the lowly CD-R is still readable due to DVD drives being backwards compatible, but most other media is not that way. And at some point in the next few years, a new form of media will likely NOT be able to read old CDs.
A few months back I ran across a Zip disk and could not remember if it contained useful/vital data or not. I had to dig through several boxes to find a parallel Zip drive, then download the drivers, so I could recover the information. Btw, it was something I'd already converted to CD several years back as part of my own 'continuous migration' plan.
Best,
Andy
John--G wrote:
The only practical solution is continuous migration to new media as it becomes available. Of course as your digital library grows migration will be come more and more of a chore.
In 20 years it is very unlikely that any computers will be able to still talk to USB or Firewire drives.
I have a different experience: as time goes on: it take me less and less time to back up more and more data in a ever shrinking external HD.
My current HD of 1500 gigs is about 1/3 the size of the first HD of 500 gigs and runs at least x3 faster. Go figure and be happy.
