How's this for ironic: the yellowed, parched photos taken by your grandparents with a clunky Kodak “Tourist” camera (circa 1948) may last longer than the digital pictures you’re snapping with your sleek new digital camera.
Sound ridiculous? Well, ask yourself: do remember the 8-inch floppy disk? Neither do I. But legend tells of computers that used to accept these disks and people (cave men, I think) that used them store data. Today these disks are nothing more than the butt of bad obsolescence jokes.
There’s a moral in the 8-inch floppy’s unceremonious extinction: formats evolve. The ones you’re relying on today to store your digital memories will, in all likelihood, not be the ones you’ll be using in the future. If you’re not careful, any images you have stored on them may follow your format of choice down the evolutionary sinkhole, never to be seen, cherished or relived again.
And your digital photos are at greater risk still. A sudden catastrophe, like a hard drive crash, can erase your entire collection in one fell swoop.
It’s a scary thought, but it’s a nightmare scenario haunting a growing number of photography manufacturers and industry analysts. Think about it, exactly how much thought have you given to ensuring that your digital images last fifty years? In all likelihood, not much. After all, no one outside of academics and archivists has ever had to worry about the “long term preservation” of photos.
With digital, that’s all changed.
One trillion served
While digital photography has been popular since at least about 2000, we are very much in uncharted territory when it comes to preserving our digital memories.
According to the Consumer Electronics Association, 78 percent of consumers rely on their PCs for long-term storage of their digital memories. This is a recipe for disaster.
Hard drives have an average life span of about five years. Yours may last longer or it may not. Eventually, no matter how long it lasts, it will fail. The impending crashes led one industry executive to dub the images captured between 2000 and the present the “lost generation.”
Even if you’re one of the 22 percent who backs up their images, do you know if you’ve recorded them correctly, or how long, say, a CD will last? Do you know whether, in ten or fifteen years out, computers will even have drives to accept read them? Or, more complicated still, that the types of image files you have – JPEGs, TIFs, RAW files – will even be recognized by the software of the future? How about in twenty years? Or fifty?
That’s the bad news. Now it’s time for the good news: you can ensure that your digital photos will last as long, and longer, than the film prints passed down through generations. It’s just going to take a small but continual investment of money, time and attention. When weighed against the prospect of losing your memories, I think you’ll agree it’s a small burden to bear.
Digital Shoeboxes
You have a variety of options to defend your images. The most sensible defense is a layered one: make multiple copies of your images stored across a variety of platforms. Your “digital negative” can reside on your computer hard drive, while your back-ups live somewhere else.
The International Imaging Industry Association (I3A) – a non profit association of imaging companies – has compiled a “cookbook” of best practices when it comes to backing up your images (available at www.savemymemories.org). One of the first, and most sensible, suggestions is to keep your photos organized. After all, you can’t back up photos you can’t find. To that end, keep all your photos in a single master folder and use some form of imaging software to manage them.
Next, protect your computer’s hard drive with data recovery software, such as Runtime Software’s GetDataBack or Roxio’s BackOnTrack. In the event of a crash or accidental delete, they can help restore lost data. Be obsessive about keeping virus and spyware update and running scans on your computer to ensure that malicious software doesn’t destroy your system.
Burn, Don’t Get Burned
If you’re sitting on a thousand-plus images and have yet to back them up, start with a DVD (provided you have a DVD burner, of course). Image organizing programs like Google’s Picasa can burn images to DVD and keep track of what was burned. The next time you drop a disc in to back-up your photos, the software will remember the last batch of images you burned and only burn images added since then.
If you’ve been moderately diligent in making back-up copies, or after you’ve deposited your collection onto DVDs, you can switch to CDs. They cost less and, since they hold less, they encourage you to make duplicate copies on a more regular basis.
When it comes to burning CDs or DVDs, faster is not better, said Terry O’Kelly, technical communications manager, Memorex.
“Although the emphasis on modern drives is their ability to record at high speeds, it is often wiser to record a disc at half its rated speed in order to assure a recording that is not near the thresholds of the disc’s and drive’s abilities,” he said. “Since all discs have errors that inexorably increase over time, the goal is to start with a low level of errors on a stable disc so that the time it takes to reach the point where errors overwhelm the error correction circuitry is as long as possible.
When it comes to purchasing blank media, don’t scrimp. In fact, go for “gold plated archival: discs - yes, they use real gold - as the gold prevents oxidation.
According to O’Kelly, “CD-Rs… tend to be able to outlast DVD discs in environmental testing. But lifetimes vary greatly from less than a year to well over a hundred years for discs of the proper design and construction, along with a high quality burn and preferred storage conditions.”
Store your well labeled discs in a cool, dry place just as you would a photo print.
Hard Drive
Given the falling costs of hard disc drives, an external hard drive is an increasingly economical way to store your image data. Given the capacious nature of hard discs, you can buy one 100GB or 250GB drive and never worry about getting additional drives. Plus, since they’re not used as frequently as the hard drive on your computer, they should last longer. Disconnecting the drive when not in use will keep it safe from any power surges and reduce the wear on the discs.
Online
There are a growing number of online services that will archive your photos for a fee on their secure servers. Some are explicitly photo-oriented, while others will host any and all digital data.
Kodak has begun to offer high-resolution downloads for all your images stored on their Gallery service. This effectively turns their site into an online storage bank. One catch: you'll need to order some print products on an annual basis to enjoy the privilege.
If you want an online service for all of your digital life, not just your photos, consider services like Box.net.
Print
Yes, even in the digital era, prints have relevance: they don’t crash and can be viewed no matter what happens in the world of electronic storage. That said, there’s no sense in printing all of your digital photos for archival purposes.
Instead, identify those images that are absolutely priceless and print those. If you have an inkjet printer in your home, manufacturers like HP, Canon or Epson will offer a combination of ink and paper to provide a print life as long, or in some cases, much longer than traditional silver halide prints – provided they’re properly cared for.
Prints should be kept out of the sun and in cool, dry places not subject to extreme temperature swings. Use acid free paper and avoid plastic housings that contain PVC or acetate if you’re placing them in an album.
Vigilance
Thomas Jefferson once observed that “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” The same can be said of digital photography. The price of bestowing your family photos to the next generation is vigilance. You simply must keep a watchful eye on the physical and electronic formats as they evolve. When they do, you must be sure to migrate your images to the updated media. Then again, when formats change, until finally it’s your grand kids responsibility.