Posted on 01/02/2015 6:34:45 AM PST by SeekAndFind
There have been many threads in the past on this very subject and a googling "Permanence of digital media" and similar queries will bring up many truly useful discussions from places like World Art Museums, The Library of Congress, the National Archives...
The most troublesome of all media is the CD/DVD. There is not other medium that can be argued to be more "permanent," yet the permanence of the most ubiquitous archiving medium has yet to be established, validated and documented.
Ditto. I have iCloud and Microsoft's Cloud (whatever they're calling it these days ... "OneDrive" I think..) and anyone who "hacks" into my Cloud accounts is going to be very, very disappointed.
I keep NOTHING in the cloud. Zilch. Zip. Nada. Want your data to be perfectly safe?
Keep it on REMOVABLE MEDIA and only insert the media when you're going to actively use the data. Then REMOVE the media when finished.
Better yet, disconnect from Internet when using your data if you're hyper-concerned.
Well, depending on your age, those may last your lifetime.
Or not.
No one knows for sure.
Aside from that, unless you have old computers with the proper software from the 90s to the present, the odds of you having the software to read the oldest data is pretty much...
ZERO.
Depends on your definition of "forever..."
Clay tablets have been read which are close to 7000 years old.
Hieroglyphic carvings, 5000 years.
No, I do not use aol Internet. Just never saw a need to change my aol email address.
I just deleted a really long and rambling post about this, which is a topic near and dear to my heart. Unfortunately, it's just too long and involved for me to spend the time to really cover it in the detail I'd like to. However, here's the bottom line:
1) Decide what is important. I have 60GB of music and 133 GB of vids on my computer. Do I reallycare about most of that stuff? No. I still have the CDs for most of the music, and DVDs for the vids. If I somehow lose them, the data can ultimately be recreated. However that is not the case with my financial documents, some email, and other miscellaneous data. However, even all of that stuff added together is not more than will fit on a DVD. It would actually take less than a CD, but I have a fair amount of stuff that I spent a lot of time to create, that I couldconcievably redo, but do not want to.
2) Once you've decided what is important, copy it to the media of your choice. (I like DVDs, as I suspect DVD readers will be around in one format or another for some time in the future.) Make another copy. Make another copy. You might want to use a USB stick. Those work great as well, and seem to be pretty stable for long term storage.
3) Put 2 copies in a safe deposit box, or at a relative's house. A safe deposit box is better, because climate control actually makes media last a lot longer than it otherwise would.
4) On a regular basis, make a new/updated copy and repeat steps 2 and 3 above. How often you do this will be determined how important the data is, and how often it changes. YMMV, but quarterly is probably a working minimum for most people.
5) Use an external hard drive to back up everything on your computer. If you're using a MAC. Use "time machine". It rocks. Probably the best personal backup software there is IMO. Buy another drive and swap the two occasionally. Perhaps keep the swapped drive off site (like in your deposit box). If you're using MS-Windows, i don't really know what is best for backup software, but you need to use something that you know you can restore from if you upgrade your computer. If you're using Linux (my preferred OS), I like "BackInTime" because it is almost identical in operation to Time Machine on a Mac.
6) Think about your data and what format it is in. If you are using a financial program to keep track of budget stuff, export a snapshot of your data to the QIF format reguarly. QIF is an extraordinarly well documented file format. It is quite likely that 20 years from now whatever financial program you are using will read and understand it. If you're smart you'll think about other document formats as well. A file created with MS-Word 1.0 is of very little use to you today if you do not have a copy of Open Office, which I believe is the only major program out there that can still read it. Modern versions of word will not. I recommend that folks convert their documents to an Open Document Format (ODF) if they can, such as that used by OpenOIffice. By this, I mean actual Open documents, not the pseudo-open formats that microsoft uses because ODF is well documented and MS formats despite protestations to the contrary, simply are not. 20 years from now, you're much more likely to be able to read an ODF document than you will some proprietary document by any vendor. This is of course my own personal opinion and others may disagree (YMMV).
If you are worried about things like image formats and that kind of stuff, you'll also have to keep up with what is going on in that space. Personally, I think you'll be OK for quite some time if your pictures are JPEGs or TIFFs. I'd be less confident in raw images from a camera. If you have all your data in JPG format, and it looks like that is going away, then you'd be smart to convert to whatever newer format is being most commonly used. Keep in mind that JPG is a lossy format (as is MP3). Each time you convert from one lossy format to another you lose some clarity. That's just the way of life. If you really care about fidelity, stick with lossless formats like FLAC for audio and, TIFF or (horror) BMP, for pictures. I am unaware of a lossless video codec. Speaking of Vids. If you have stuff on VHS that you must save and can't repurchase in a digital format, you'd best get on that now. You can do it yourself with the right hardware (your video card) and programs, or you can pay someone else to do it for you. (same goes for 8MM film)
Yeah, it looks like I went on a bit again, but you should have seen what I already deleted.
Thanks.
I have concluded that maybe just sending some of the best(most important) pictures over to get printed the old fashioned way would be wise as well.
We all have old pictures around that are 50 and 60 years and have stood the test of time.
It's a train wreck waiting to happen. But, I've been wrong before. All the same, nothing of mine goes into The Cloud. All local storage and encrypted.
Be careful of the inks and whatnot used for that. Some places that "print" pictures from digital data use inks that just really will not stand the test of time. Same goes for the paper it's printed on. It's unfortunate, but in the next hundred or so, many will be surprised at the paucity of photographs from the early 21st century that survive. You'll likely see more photos from the 1950's through the 1970's than from the 2000's though teens.
LOL! Suckers!
LOL!
I just had this thought-image of people naming their pet #ReDEE@oooY or lkOK*&*Kli%... so they’ll have an easy to remember password!
Okay...that was pretty good! If I had been trying to be funny, I don’t think I would have had the creativity to come up with that!
Did you think of it yourself? Because that would be a great cartoon...I am visualizing two people talking to each other with the dog laying on the floor at their feet:
PERSON 1: “I’ve been told not to use the name of my family members or pets for a password, because it is too easy to guess.”
PERSON 2: “Oh, man...I didn’t know that! I...I used my dog’s name as a password!
PERSON 1: “What’s his name?”
PERSON 2: “#ReDEE@oooY! This is awful. Does this mean I am going to have to change his name?”
Do you mind if I draw this?
Me too. I am a service tech, and this is ultimately the primary concern wrt my clients. Your suggestions are really good, but we are quickly moving into a new arena - Data is getting way too big to back up manually. You and I might, but the average joe just isn't going to take the time...
Thus I rise with another suggestion to add to your list: Most folks have more than one computer in the house nowadays - Backing one to the other is a very viable alternative... I use Microsoft SyncToy to synchronize my live files (normally in my laptop) to my desktop server. If my laptop goes down, I can simply switch operations to the desktop and function relatively normally, with all of my data in place.
And better yet, better than everything, is NAS (Network Attached Storage) - I will explain it a bit for those without knowledge: NAS is like an USB external drive, except that it isn't USB - It is Network instead. You would plug it into your router, and there it sits, always on, always ready. This is an extraordinarily handy thing, because backup routines can be completely automated, and data centralized. I don't use them myself, but I have the luxury of having a data server and media server always on in my house, so I have automated routines to back to both... But a NAS provides the same functionality at a considerable savings. I would estimate that at least 70% of my SOHO clients now have a NAS based backup system in place.
Now, that doesn't relieve the client of the responsibility of manual backups now and then - And I still think one should back manually to USB (and then unattached) now and then, and perhaps ultra-critical data backed to a thumb daily, But I am sure you will agree that replication is key - Storage is cheap, and the more copies you have, and the more places you can put it, the safer you are... and the more backup chains (the way one creates backups), the more likely that one of the processes will have your data backup successfully completed and/or preserved. And the automated route supposes that something will indeed be backed up (something not so likely with your average Joe manual backup) So in the big data sense, that NAS can very easily and automatically be made to back up everything, and that is worthy of consideration.
By the way, I know it is still insecure for other reasons, but it reminded me of Richard Feynman’s experiences with safes.
He was fascinated by safes when he was working at Los Alamos when they were building the bomb, because there were a lot of them, many of the highest and most secure quality.
He tried and tried to crack them, and found it it wasn’t like they portrayed it in movies, a man with a stethoscope and twitchy, sandpapered fingertips.
That didn’t work.
But he found two things that DID work: Social Engineering, and Attention to Detail.
With social engineering, people would write their safe combinations on the underside of their ink blotter. Or make them their birthday. Or their wives birthdays. Or some known mathematical thing.
The other thing was attention to detail (combined with human engineering!) He found that when people opened the safe, many would invariably open the safe and leave the dial on the last number of the combination. So, if it took three numbers, he had one of them (leaving two others to discover or guess at) which he would write down in a little book he kept in a leather bag full of what he thought were safecracker tools...:)
Then, by accident (because he was one of those guys who would talk with someone, while aimlessly twiddling with some object like a paperweight or pipe. Or safe.
While he would carry on social chats with the scientists and staff he worked with, he would stand next to the open safe door with one elbow on top of the door, the other hand on the lever or dial, twirling or pushing aimlessly, talking all the while.
One day while doing this, he had his hand on the lever as he twirled the dial while talking and felt something. He realized that when someone would leave the safe open on the last number of the combination, you could discover what the second number of the combination was by holding down the lever and dialing backwards. When the dial hit the middle number of the combination, the level would transmit a nearly imperceptible bump that you could feel.
So that gave him two out of the three combination numbers needed to open a safe, which, again, he had in a little ledger containing everyone’s safe.
Then, to figure out the last unknown digit of the combination, it was just work. If you knew the last two digits, you could go through the combination over and over again selecting a different digit on the combination dial followed by the last two digits he knew.
So, if the last two digits were 15 and 33, and there were 60 increments on the dial, he would start with 1-15-33, then 2-15-33, then 3-15-33 and so on until he went all the way around the dial. He would just sit down and go through all the combinations (I think he said he got so good dialing that he could do it in just two or three minutes!)
So, when people needed a safe opened because General “X” was in town and couldn’t be found, and they just had to have something in the safe, they would call him because he was a known as a guy who could “crack safes”!
He would show up with his leather bag of tools, tell them he needed to be absolutely alone for a while with complete quiet to crack the safe, so they would put him in the room with the safe, close the door, and whisper and wait with wide eyes.
He would go in, sit down at the desk for about ten minutes, reading or eating his lunch, then pull out his little book and open the safe!
The guy was brilliant, and funny in his telling!
A pure genius!
I still remember reading one of the red “Lectures” books by him decades ago - just for the pleasure.
Of course all my FR entries are original AFAIK and free to use- but only for good- not for evil...
I loathe the ‘tin foil hat’ brigade as much as anyone; “never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence” as Napoleon said. However once something is digitized, it is in the realm of people of great intelligence and highly malicious intent.
Reading “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman” was a real eye-opener for me! It made me realize what a modern man he was in his day
If I draw that sequence, it would ONLY be in that spirit!
“Modern man” is an ambiguous compliment these days, “ageless” would describe Feynman well.
Say, I looked at your home page and as one (blessed in so many ways) Navy brat to another it’s interesting that an officer’s son went into the Navy, but an enlisted Lifer’s son was advised to join another service! LOL!
Good method you have there rlmorel. I need to do the hard drive lock box step.
That is a funny way to look at it!
I was so proud of my dad,I had a sailor say to me one time when he found out who my dad was (XO Subic Bay) and he said “Your dad is a pretty good guy.”
I figured if he didn’t like my dad, he wouldn’t have even said anything...he did seem to get along well with enlisted. I found out just a few years ago that the crew on his destroyer called him “Ack Ack”, and thought it might have a bad connotation, but the crew member said (when I asked) said it was because signed all the Plans of the Day as “A.A. Morel”.
I think it was because he treated them as men, with respect
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.