balidey
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| posted on 2/10/11 at 09:52 AM |
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Finding old photos in the attic in 50 years time
You know that old shoe box in the attic stuffed full of photos?
Or the little box of slides and negatives?
Or the photo album with the cellophane covers?
What are we going to do in 50 years time?
Photos are now (I would guess) entirely in a digital format. What are our kids and grand-kids going to discover in the attics of the future? Are our
current photos going to be lost? I upload some to photobucket etc, but these places are only going to have a finite life.
Same with hard drives, these may not last or even be kept in the attic, and no one will have the right OS to open them in 50 years.
Have we already lost the old photos of the future?
To combat this very slightly, what my family does is print off photos, or make a photo book of holidays. But think of all the photos we take very day.
Now think about not seeing them again. Makes me sad. How about you?
Now I'm not suggesting we print off every photo, but perhaps we should think about future proofing our photo formats, or archiving better?
Something my dad once said. We were looking at a photo of a car I took at the NEC motorshow, must have been about 20 years ago. We have kept this
photo as its a memory to us of a trip out together. I don't want the photo to be gone forever, so I have kept it. But then my dad pointed out
that I was on one side of the car taking the photo. On the other side of the car were about 5 or 6 people taking photos of me taking a photo of the
car. Now what I would love to see is those photos of me and my dad at the car show. Those photos would be so much better than my photos. And I
guarantee those photos are in other peoples attics. My father and I are in those photos, but I will never see them. How sad is that?
Dutch bears have terrible skin due to their clogged paws
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MikeFellows
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| posted on 2/10/11 at 09:59 AM |
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a few years ago, I purchased a professional negative/slide scanner thats did 35mm slides, negatives and APS. it cost me around £600 second hand, I
spent a month or so scanning the family photos then relisted it on ebay and sold it for £610
all my photos digitally archived - however I still havent brought myself to dispose of the originals 
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MikeRJ
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| posted on 2/10/11 at 10:09 AM |
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quote:
Originally posted by MikeFellows
a few years ago, I purchased a professional negative/slide scanner thats did 35mm slides, negatives and APS. it cost me around £600 second hand, I
spent a month or so scanning the family photos then relisted it on ebay and sold it for £610
all my photos digitally archived - however I still havent brought myself to dispose of the originals
What medium have you used to archive the photos? Hopefully not CDR/DVDR as they have a surprisingly short life.
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stevebubs
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| posted on 2/10/11 at 10:25 AM |
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I use a variety of tools to sync all the photos to each and every PC in the house.
Also slowly scanning all my old photo albums in - including some that are coming up for 90 yrs old....
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Liam
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| posted on 2/10/11 at 10:38 AM |
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If we look after it, our digital data can far outlast physical photos which will always degrade over time. The best way will be to keep it
'live' and periodically move it to newer formats so you avoid both mechanical degradation and format obselescence.
But you're talking about chucking some data in the loft unpowered and somebody finding it in 50 years time. Well modern hard drives are
notoriously prone to not spinning up if unused for as little as a few years because the mechanisms sieze up. That doesn't neccessarily mean the
data is gone but you'd be calling into some specialist data recovery company to take it to bits and read the platter directly. Even then the
magnetic storage could still degrade over longer periods of time so after 50 years you might be very likely to not have anything readable left on a
modern hard drive at all. They were never intended to be permanent long-term storage.
New solid state drives might fare better in a box in the loft, but they are also not designed to be permanent and the charge that determines a
'1' state could leak over time resulting in an empty drive.
Optical I think is the best bet at the moment. Whilst cheap CD/DVD Rs can degrade in only a few years, especially subject to UV light and bad
handling, I've seen longevities of up to 100 years stated for archival grade optical media if handled and stored properly! Add multiple copies
and the result should be your grandchildren discovering your old photos in the loft in 50 years time in perfect working order in all their 10MP
goodness (if they dont already have them in a folder taking up a tiny fragment of the storage capacity of their sentient smartphones  ).
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MikeFellows
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| posted on 2/10/11 at 10:39 AM |
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quote:
Originally posted by MikeRJ
quote:
Originally posted by MikeFellows
a few years ago, I purchased a professional negative/slide scanner thats did 35mm slides, negatives and APS. it cost me around £600 second hand, I
spent a month or so scanning the family photos then relisted it on ebay and sold it for £610
all my photos digitally archived - however I still havent brought myself to dispose of the originals
What medium have you used to archive the photos? Hopefully not CDR/DVDR as they have a surprisingly short life.
nope, Ive them stored in the house on a raid10 array and also on the company server at work, im thinking of sticking them on the cloud, but costs are
still a little high for services where the pictures remain mine
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MikeFellows
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| posted on 2/10/11 at 10:42 AM |
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quote:
Originally posted by Liam
If we look after it, our digital data can far outlast physical photos which will always degrade over time. The best way will be to keep it
'live' and periodically move it to newer formats so you avoid both mechanical degradation and format obselescence.
But you're talking about chucking some data in the loft unpowered and somebody finding it in 50 years time. Well modern hard drives are
notoriously prone to not spinning up if unused for as little as a few years because the mechanisms sieze up. That doesn't neccessarily mean the
data is gone but you'd be calling into some specialist data recovery company to take it to bits and read the platter directly. Even then the
magnetic storage could still degrade over longer periods of time so after 50 years you might be very likely to not have anything readable left on a
modern hard drive at all. They were never intended to be permanent long-term storage.
New solid state drives might fare better in a box in the loft, but they are also not designed to be permanent and the charge that determines a
'1' state could leak over time resulting in an empty drive.
Optical I think is the best bet at the moment. Whilst cheap CD/DVD Rs can degrade in only a few years, especially subject to UV light and bad
handling, I've seen longevities of up to 100 years stated for archival grade optical media if handled and stored properly! Add multiple copies
and the result should be your grandchildren discovering your old photos in the loft in 50 years time in perfect working order in all their 10MP
goodness (if they dont already have them in a folder taking up a tiny fragment of the storage capacity of their sentient smartphones ).
I wouldnt store or recommend anyone store information on optical media that they want to use any further ahead then the following week. its probably
one of the worst formats I can think of for storing data long term
edit to add:
none of the 'archival media' that you talk of has had any real world tests - and the greatest thing about it from their perspective is
that they wont be hear in 100 years when someone finds out it doesnt work as promised
[Edited on 2/10/11 by MikeFellows]
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