AdoramaPix Forums/Community Chat/General Discussion
How do you preserve your photos?
Al Escudero
posted this on June 24, 2011 12:11 am
The other day I was looking through some vintage photos with a colleague of mine, and we got onto the topic of storing photos. She confessed that she had over a terrabyte of photos stored on her hard drive and was concerned that she would experience a hard drive crash and lose her irreplaceable photos. I asked whether she had backups and she said she had copied many of her photos to DVDs, but admitted that they weren't up-to-date. This led to a lengthy discussion about the various ways to keep one's photos safe for future generations. Over the course of the conversation we began to realize that many of the conventional methods of storage were simply unsuitable for long term storage.
- Hard drives will eventually crash. External hard drives that aren't hooked up are subject to physical trauma, moisture, etc. Even if you kept them in a safety deposit box, they are ultimately magnetic data imprinted on a disk. How long will that data remain readable? 5 years? sure... 50? Not likely.
- Websites. Is Flickr going to be around in 2061? Picasa? Tech companies come and go - I'm not sure I'd trust my irreplaceable photos to the cloud.
- What about burning DVDs? That should keep them safe right? Bad news. Apparently burned disks can start to lose data in as little as 2-5 years. So much for that.
- Flash drives? Apparently they store data as a static charge which can fade over 10 years or so.
One also has to consider that standards change over time as well. I still have some 5.25" floppy disks from my Apple //e computer in my cupboard. How on earth would I read them? If they even work anymore - which is doubtful. Would DvD drives, USB or any of the other standards we take for granted nowadays even exist in another 40-50 years?
I'm curious to know what those of you out there do to preserve your memories? If you wanted to make sure your great grandchildren get to see your photos, how will you do it?
Comments
This is something that's been weighing heavily on my mind and heart. I've been traditional scrapbooking and also creating the bound digital photobooks. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. I love the duplication option of the photobooks. Right now it almost seems like my mother's suitcase storage system wasn't half bad... easy to divide for the descendents without tearing up the albums... I haven't been actually printing that many photos lately. I guess I'll start up again and get out the old blue suitcase:)
The best way to preserve photos for future generations? PRINT photos, not just for yourself but for relatives and friends. Write who was in the photo, date it and mail them out! It sounds so old fashioned, but who doesn't love to receive photo prints? People are likely to save them. If your house burns down or 100 years pass, not all your prints are lost because you have shared them.
Yes, there are SO many great options for digital photography storage and backups, but nothing is 100% perfect. I do know that good quality prints are a solid way to ensure you still have the photos for generations to come.
Way too many of my photos never see the light of day outside Lightroom. I do need to print more and share more!
That was much the same conclusion we came to Julia. Isn't it funny with all our modern technology and one of the best ways to preserve your photos is still the way our grandparents did it?
Spreading them around is a great idea - essentially an offsite backup. At the same time that addresses another modern problem. So many people I know have thousands and thousands of photos taken at family functions, parties or other events that never see the light of day. My niece was asking me a few weeks back if I had any photos from her last couple of birthday parties because she couldn't find any. So I looked through my Lightroom and sure enough there were dozens of great photos of her and her friends on my hard drive that I barely even remembered taking and no one even knew existed.
As I browsed through my Lightroom I found many many more great photos that I realized I just uploaded automatically to my PC following the event, and that the people featured in them have never seen them. Some from years back. Some of people who have since passed away and I'm sure their family would really want them. Recently I've started putting some of the better ones into photo books.