By Rosie LombardiWith analog going the way of the dinosaurs and technology changing constantly, how can you really ensure your digital photographs will withstand the passage of time? PCworld.ca's Rosie Lombardi gives you the lowdown on keeping your memories alive forever.
Every family has a shoe box somewhere of precious photos from bygone eras, showing Christmas, Eid, Hanukah or other celebrations in the old country or a picture of grandpa in his army days. But, today, digital cameras are replacing analogues - and creating an unexpected problem in the preservation of digital family photos for future generations.
About 6 billion images are snapped annually by digital cameras and cell phones, according to the International Imaging Industry Association (IA3). Vast and chaotic repositories are being created everywhere by people who dump them on hard drives, networks and the web. And yet, few consumers manage this area properly for the future. (For more ideas on working with digital images, see How to buy a digital camera and Photo finishing made easy.)
"Are people backing them up? Are they putting metatags around the pictures to identify them and so on?" asks Darin Stahl, senior research analyst at the London, Ontario-based Info-Tech Research Group.
The answer, according to Stahl, is that people have yet to develop the right habits for organizing digital family photos. "Compare that with regular photos, where you could flip them over and grandma had written it was Uncle Ernie at the 1946 family picnic in that lovely old handwriting that none of us can do anymore."
Properly stored, paper photos can last over 100 years. But, technology cycles are much shorter and the storage
media, file formats, software and hardware used today for digital images will almost certainly be replaced by newer technology in the near future.
Future-proofing storage for pics is virtually impossible, as storage media are regularly usurped by new ones. Floppy disks, computer tapes and VHS are already on their way into the dustbin of history. Some manufacturers claim premium gold-plated CDs and DVDs can last up to 300 years. But Stahl says this is controversial. The purported longevity is theoretical, as it is determined by exaggerating environmental conditions in testing, not elapsed time.
"There isn't any computer-based storage medium that can be considered archival, irrespective of its physical longevity," says Stahl, pointing out that all magnetic-based storage media used today will only last about 25 years or so, as the magnetic fields will eventually degrade. "So you can forget about storage for your grandchildren."
Nor does long-lived storage solve the broader problem of technology obsolescence, he says. The hardware and software to read the medium would also need to be preserved. "Some parents pull out the old Super 8 camera out of the garage every Christmas, and that's an example of preserving the hardware," says Stahl. But, in the end, this is susceptible to failure too as the equipment will eventually break down over time.
Most institutions have a strategy to migrate their data from older technology to new, as this is the only reliable archival method, says Stahl. Consumers must adopt the same approach if they want to ensure those precious memories are around in the future. "Even people who migrated their old Super 8 home movies to VHS now have to migrate them to DVD. That's the real issue - you must have a strategy to move data down the road to new things as they become available."
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Topic: How long will my digital pictures last? (Read 1072 times)