Digital memories won't last forever

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

[APFel]

The emulation and vaporware scene to the rescue! There are quite a few folks who are interested in preserving old media (not just old games). For archiving that old C64 or Apple II collection, try buying a Catweasel floppy disk controller for your PC. It'll read all of the old media from almost any common home computer ever made, from the Apple II, Atari computers, Amiga, etc.

I bought one and backed up 300 C64 disks as well as my Amiga collection. Great little product.

http://www.jschoenfeld.com/indexe.htm

(I am not financially interested in this product, I am just a satisfied customer and a computer geek).

APf

[Knitting A Conundrum]

How about we print out everything at least once, photograph it in black and white? That lasts a long, long time...

Of course, I'm one of those people with old computers stashed in the closet because of various treasures on them which will probably never be accessed again....

[Publius6961]

How long to CDs last?

That's the whole point. Nobody knows.

[Bikers4Bush]

I have to believe that someone will write the software to fill that market gap eventually.

Of course that does nothing for you at the moment.

What you're talking about is exactly the reason I rejected two photogs for our wedding. They only used digital and I wanted negatives.

[Dalite]

Use a serial cable and a null modem. Open up a terminal program on each computer and upload from the AT&T to the other machine.

Try to save the WS files on the AT&T to common text files first. It is likely you may loose some of your formatting

[Ignatz]

the Library of Congress has spent the past several years forming committees and issuing reports

ROTFL! Gotta keep that grant money coming in, fellas!

Or try this one:
the Library of Congress [insert Go'vt agency of your choice here] has spent the past several years forming committees and issuing reports

[Kozak]

CD. Good for 100+ years. Non-magnetic.

Nuh uh. The dye's degrade. Rate variable.

[Salgak]

Theoretically, IF the CD is kept in a dark environment, free of dust and with a stable temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit. And using top-of-the-line CD-Rs.

Operationally, 5-10 years is more likely for a written CD-R lifespan.

[Publius6961]

Thanks for that link. Anybody who hopes to have things like family pictures last long enough to be enjoyed generations from now, ought to try this product. I know I will.

[Ignatz]

What you're talking about is exactly the reason I rejected two photogs for our wedding. They only used digital and I wanted negatives.

You were already getting married, how many more negatives did you need, LOL!!

J/K!

[Gorzaloon]

I have a ca. 1981 ATT PC which still runs Wordstar very nicely. Am trying to figure out how on EARTH to get some of the data off the hard drive and onto my regular computer. My sixteen-year-old daughter's baby journal is on there and it's precious. So are the early novels I wrote but never published, which are now suddenly in demand. If anyone has any suggestions short of retyping, please let me know!

E-mail them to yourself on another machine as ASCII.

[stubernx98]

Here is what I do. When I upgrade my PC every few years I move all my data to the new PC. Additionally have an external had drive I back up everything to. And then Burn CD's of the unreplacable stuff every 4 to 6 months or so and store in a fireproof vault.

Seems to me the only permanent media would be mechanical such as the old LP's.

[Recall]

We have had a home computer since 1994 so you can imagine the changes we have been through. I still have my external zip drives somewhere..lol.

Are you saying DVD's last longer than CD's or are you just continually upgrading to keep your data on the newest thing out there?

[WildTurkey]

How hard is it to burn images to a CD for crying out loud?

You missed the point of the article. It is about how to read that CD 20 years from now.

For example, do you have any old databases on 5 1/4 inch floppies?

[TomGuy]

"Whereas to take a traditional photograph and just put it in a shoe box doesn't take any work."

Uhhhh...flood, fire, tornado, hurricane. That photograph is extremely vunerable to the elements.

... individual PC owners struggle in private.

GAG! Give them some credit!!!

The life span of data on a CD recorded with a CD burner, for instance, could be as little as five years if it is exposed to extremes in humidity or temperature.

In high humidity and high temps, a photo can have an even shorter shelf life.

Ok, here's a solution:




CD-R drives are dirt cheap, free to $20 and the disks are maybe a quarter in quantities.

DVD-R drives are getting dirt cheap, $50 to $150 and the disks (holding up to 4.7 GIG) are ander a buck.

Uploading digital data to newer media isn't that difficult, Pete. I can upload from a 3.5" floppy, to the CD-R or to the DVD-R. It ain't that difficult, Pete. It really ain't.


Pete Hite seems to be looking for a problem where none really exists.

[artzboy]

I don't blame you for choosing negs. I still shoot all of my weddings on film and use that fact as a selling point.

[Paco]

Legacy data is a BIG issue. The problem isn't really about storage, it's about file format compatibility. While JPG, TIFF, BMP may be accepted formats today, what about tomorrow?

You can always burn images to CD but the viewing sofware will change and eventually (sooner than you think) JPG, TIFF, BMP will not be standard formats. What do you do then? Convert your thousands and thousands of images to the new format? Lots of luck. I deal with this issue every day in my business. 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.

Rule of thumb, make sure you have a hard copy of everything you want to save.

[js1138]

Arrogant fools in every age think everything is better than everything that preceeded it.

Lots of stuff will get lost, but that is nothing new. The thing that makes digital special is that files can be copied to new media without loss. Nothing guarantees that they will be.

And even if family images could be preserved forever, who will have the time to view them. In the past five years my family (four adults now) has accumulated about 50,000 images. All but maybe a thousand are either trash or redundant.

When my daughter got married I spent several months putting together a digital slide show. I went through 25 years of old photos, scanning the best, cropping them, and correcting the color of faded prints. I wound up with about 700 images worth preserving, all of which fit on one CD.

Will those survive a hundred years? They will if there are people interested in keeping them.

[Publius6961]

What you're talking about is exactly the reason I rejected two photogs for our wedding. They only used digital and I wanted negatives.

Are you aware that high res negatives can be produced from digital images?
It's done every day.

[TrueKnightGalahad]

100+ years? In your dreams, I'm afraid; much professional literature addresses the transience of CD as a storage medium. There are many documented instances of properly archived CDs becoming partially or completely unreadable in scant years, let alone decades. Save your "Duh"s for the easy ones; this is an incredibly important issue that is not subject to quick'n'easy resolution, and that is becoming more and more difficult to solve.