Digital memories won't last forever

Deseret Morning News ^ | 11.29.04 | Katie Hafner Katie Hafner Katie Hafner Katie Hafner

[WildTurkey]

I sure would like to be able to retrieve my collage work from my old 5” floppies – done on a Commodore. The trusty Commodore died, and with it the ability to read the disks.

I didn't know you could do collage on the old Commodore.

[Hatteras]

I have been in the process of searching for and gathering old family photos and have about twenty-two carousels of family slides (35mm). I'm looking for a scanner or scanning attachment that can do 35mm slides. Any ideas?

[Petronski]

I used to do papier mache on my Tandy Color Computer...

[TheForceOfOne]

I contracted CD's at Wal-Mart in the electronics isle, there is no cure! They leave you with a burning desire. lol

[shadowman99]

"As long as the format is documented, somebody will always be able to create a program to read the data. This just means that undocumented formats (e.g. MS Word) are a bad choice for archiving."

Files protected by DRM will be that much harder to get to tomorrow. DRM scemes will not be well documented, and as copyrights expire on work you will find they are just as locked away as when they were protected use.

[kms61]

As the article says, and as I can personally attest, CD's aren't all they're cracked up to be re: permanent storage. I use them in my work and they go bad relatively often.

[R. Scott]

C64 emulator?

[R. Scott]

Oops ...

[Queen Jadis]

bookmark

[Publius6961]

Nikon, Canon and others make film scanners, and they all do both negatives and slides. They are not cheap, but if you have lots of images to process it's cheaper to buy one than to have them all commercially scanned.

Google "film scanners".

[gregwest]

All this talk about storage media. What happens if something were to happen, like a large EMP pulse from a nuke detonated at high altitude. Anything with integrated circuits that isn't specifically hardened would be fried. We'd have all this digital media stored with no way to access it.

That's why I still keep some vinyl albums on hand! :) After Armageddon, you'll find me listening to my old Artie Shaw albums...

GW

[BlueMondaySkipper]

This one is easy...

Just post all your important stuff on the internet in the form of jokes. These never seem to go away.

It's kind of like painting cement. If you properly prep the surface and get two good coats down, you can expect it to stick for a couple of years. If, however, you spill some of the very same paint on some concrete, it's there FOREVER

[Paco]

True, someone will or can always write a program to convert the data and of course, this will cost time and money. The challenge for the "typical" user however, is to be cognizant about when file format changes occur. I see professional companies that fail to do this every day. The problem isn't the solution, it's awareness. Most companies, let alone home users, aren't aware of changes and/or don't respond to changes when they should. The result is large amounts of data that must be read and/or converted to new formats. And this can be time consuming and costly. Again, a decent reason for always maintaining a hardcopy.

[rwfromkansas]

This is why I haven't started burning CD's yet....

I just wonder if DVD's will really last as long as they are supposed to last...

[rwfromkansas]

Never heard of them...

[k2blader]

Bookmarked.

[Thud]

The Epson Perfection 4180 scanner I have has an adapter for use with slides, negatives and transparencies. I've never tried to use it with slides, but it works with negatives. I have a box of slides of my wedding, taken by my brother, and will get to those eventually.

[Dave Olson]

Engineering documents that have been created over the past 20 years need to be accessed today and the cost of converting them to current file formats is VERY EXPENSIVE.

Seems to me there are several choices to be made, and all of them are going to cost something: Either one has to create or find or maintain machines that will access those documents now and evermore. Or, continue to convert them all to the new formats as time goes along. Or, scrap the old unreadable documents and either start over or notify your clients and customers that anything that was covered in them is no longer supported.

[perfect stranger]

"try to find a reel-to-reel tape player anymore."

Check the yellow pages for recording studios in your area.

[perfect stranger]

"If he wanted to retrieve anything from the old PC, Yates said, it would require a great deal of wiring and rewiring. "I'd have to reconfigure my entire office just to get it to boot up," he said."

Somebody should tell this guy about extention cords and powerstrips. He must've been sick that day. LOL