Bit Rot Stalks Your Digital Keepsakes

axlrosen writes "The NYTimes has an article about the problems of digital archiving. How many of your digital memories will still be around 50 years from now, considering lost disks, incompatible formats, hard drive crashes, fading CD-Rs, etc.? Unfortunately Peter Briggs' solution won't work for most of us. The only real way to make sure that your grandkids get to see your digital photos is to make real photographic prints from them. (When I bought my Mom a digital camera I installed Picasa for her, and made sure she knows to order real prints of all the pictures she wants to survive through the ages...)"

Comments

Boingboing.net article contents

[Anonymous Coward]

Saturday, November 6, 2004

Alien v Predator script saved by Internet pirates
Amazing anaecdote from Peter Briggs, the author of the screenplay for Alien Versus Predator.

I wrote "A vs P" originally - oh, God...did you hear that? I actually said "A vs P". I hate that thing...it's like "T2" or "LXG"! Anyway, I wrote it on an Amstrad computer, which was about one step above a Univac Room Filler. In '92 I swapped to an Apple Mac, which I've used ever since. And I ended up losing the Amstrad disk, which was some weird, unreadable proprietary brand anyway. It wasn't until whoever it was transcribed it and pirated it onto the web years later, that I was able to cut-and-paste it into Final Draft and have an electronic copy again. So, thank-you, Internet Leaker, wherever you were!

Re:Umm

[pyro101]

Hundreds of years? Have you seen the fade on photos 50 years ago, 100 years ago? These are even supposed to be the cherrished chemical grail that will make photos last forever. Would you like to know what photographers do with photos/film that they want to last for years, put them in a pitch black room insde of binders in drawers, that are rarely opened. The room is controlled both for humidity and temp. I'll take buying a new HDD every 6 months to that. Then you can print new prints every 10 years and abuse them to hearts wishes, not have to place the photo over there since it is too close to the sunlight, or go rabid if a kid tears up a $.20 peice of paper.

Re:Every 2-3 years

[garcia]

That is exactly what I do. Two seperate types of backups going to three seperates machines.

A daily backup of important files (and stuff that is changed daily) goes to all machines in one shot at ~6am.

A weekly backup of EVERYTHING goes to three different machines every Sunday at ~5am.

Now, I realize that all three could be screwed simulataneously but at least I know that TWO of those machines have automated backup to CDRW daily.

Yeah, it's paranoid, it's redundant, but it's my data and it's important to me. If I lost my 2300 pictures I'd be lost.

Re:Umm

[Ford Prefect]

Colour materials are another matter. Because they are based on chemical dyes instead of silver crystals, they are subject to chemical change (i.e. fading). Current films quote longevity of 50 to 100 years.

A minor fade can still be pretty bad. I found an envelope of 1980s-era colour prints as taken by my father - all seemingly of a number of people with cameras standing outside, near some flowerbeds and low fences.

On closer inspection, I noticed the very faint, faded image of the Taj Mahal in the background, near-indistinguishable from the sky.

So, the photos are now useless, unless I scan them in and do some pretty heavy enhancement - but then what am I supposed to do with the results? :-)

Color - B/W

[dexter riley]

Is there a service where you can copy your color negatives to three b/w negatives, one for each color layer, so they can be recombined later to make a full color image? This strikes me as the best long-term analog solution to losing precious color pictures.