Ask Slashdot: Best Long-Term Video/Picture Storage?

First time accepted submitter (and first-time parent — congratulations!) SoylentRed writes "I recently have had my first kid, a wonderful healthy daughter who is now just over 6 months old. As one can expect, we have an abundance of photos and videos, and have started to scratch our heads about the best way to store these files and back them up long-term. My parents have asked us (funny thing is it was my mom — the least tech-savvy person among our family) what our plan is to make sure these files are saved and available for her when she is older — which made me realize that we don't really have a good plan! We are currently using TimeMachine on my wife's MacBook Pro; for now we are doing OK with that as a back-up. But my parents have offered to help pay for something that might be a better solution. We could burn DVDs — but that is tedious and gets to be a pain as we would need to back those up (or recopy) them every year or so to be sure we aren't suffering from degrading DVDs. Is our best option right now to pick up two hard drives, back up all our pictures and videos to the first, and then use a 3rd party app to mirror that drive to the second just in case one of them craps out? Is there an online solution that would be better? We are still a few years away from being able to afford the DVDs/CDs that are the 100+ year discs. Is there a better solution I haven't thought of?"

Comments

Print

[MrEricSir]

Select the best photos, and print them. It's cheap, lasts a long time, and you can easily print multiple copies for safekeeping.

Re:Print

[Cragen]

Interestingly, a distant cousin of mine just today posted a picture of a family group which includes our great(-great?)-grandfather, which is a copy of picture taken around 1875. One of my cousins presumably still has this picture. I have no idea where the pictures I took of my daughter currently are. I took movies of her and her brother on the mini-tape format. Only way to show them is through the camera to the VHS machine. (Not exactly sure where the camera is.) So, good luck with that! My advice. Take a few pictures to get it out of your system then enjoy every swinging second of being with your kids. They will grow up and head out into the world unbelievably fast. (I still can't believe mine are in college.) Good Luck!

Re:Print

[Anonymous Coward]

Without question. In 80 years, you're going to die. Your kids are going to come into your house, go through your stuff and try to figure out what to keep and what goes to the estate sale. No matter how carefully assembled and documented, no matter how well you lay out (now) your archival system and metadata linkage, when it comes down to picking through the bones of your life, it's going to look like a computer system (and probably an ancient, useless one at that). A shoebox full of pictures, especially with notes written on the back, has clear value in that context and will be saved for the next generation. Those same pictures assembled into an album, even more so.

Video...how do you think you're going to play all those h264 in 80 years, when your computer is a little sliver of plastic embedded in your thumb?

The most commonly asked question on "Ask Slashdot"

[Verdatum]

Every 3 months, never ceases to amaze me.

Oh for chrissakes

[slaker]

Drives break. Accidents happen. DVDs degrade. Consumer grade storage just isn't a good idea for anything long term.
Pay for Mozy or Crashplan or some other commercial service. Your stuff can go on whatever ridiculous combination of disk arrays and tape backups they use for you and anyone else who is paying the $50 a year or whatever it is to keep your stuff available. This is by far the least hassle of any available option.

Re:The most commonly asked question on "Ask Slashd

[QuasiSteve]

Probably because nobody ever replies with a reasonably affordable solution that is guarenteed to last for atleast 20 years.

Do you suppose that maybe, just maybe, that's because no such solution exists?

Seriously, if there had been some manner of breakthrough in storage technology that would radically have changed the replies people gave 3 months ago, 6 months ago, 9 months ago, 12 months ago, etc. don't you think it would have been not only front page news at Slashdot but on practically any technology website worth its salt?

No, I'm with GP. Stop asking the same question if you can reasonably expect the answers to be the same, too.

For those needing car analogies:
Slashdot is the car. The editors and commenters are the drivers. The people submitting these types of articles are the whiney kids going "Are we there yet?".

Unfortunately, the drivers in this case are horrible parents and humor their kids with "No, not yet." / "No, but we are somewhere else and let me tell you all about it even if it's not what you asked about.".

A sane parent would have done the "No. I'll tell you when we're there*. Now stop asking or I'm going to pull over"-threat thing.
( * I.e. by posting about the aforementioned technological breakthrough. )

Re:Proven longterm storage

[PhotoJim]

File and forget works with film. Digital archives are better if you do the work; analog archives are better if you don't. And over the decades, almost inevitably, someone forgets to do the work.

Print a book

[frankmu]

Totally agree with you regarding photos. I use iPhoto to print out books of our family trips, then send copies to the grandparents. You have off site storage, and don't have to worry about finding the correct media player. The kids are able to read it whenever they want to. It's fun to watch my kids snuggle up with their grandparents on the couch with books, not as easy with a laptop or tablet.