Long term digital photo storage

[DigitalRelish]

Recently, I've been pondering over the longevity of my digital images. I've negatives which are almost as old as I am which will be useable for many more years to come, but how will my variety of different raw file formats and JPGs fare?

I'm sure current formats will be supported for the foreseeable, but I wonder what will happen to the billions of images out there when JPG eventually becomes obsolete?

Also, I'm fairly happy with my current RAID (plus back-ups) set-up, but has anyone considered their approach to long-term archiving i.e. making sure your images are accessible for future generations?

Magnetic storage can lose its integrity over time and optical media eventually fails too. How will we keep our personal libraries intact?

Is the way forward to rely in third party specialists to keep our data secure and refreshed as is needed? I guess we're still in the relative infancy of using digital photos as opposed to film based photos, but we should be thinking about this now, in my opinion.

Any thoughts?

 

[neil_g]

what do you class as future generations? for example get too far down line and technology becomes obsolete so its all a bit pointless thinking too far in advance.

i mean for example currently if you have an old cinefilm you take it to a specialist to get it converted to dvd (etc). i wouldnt worry too much beyond 50 years (average lifespan of archive grade dvd/blu-ray), beyond that leave it up to the next person to convert to the current tech

 

[arad85]

I don't think JPG will become obsolete - it is too widely a used technology. What may happen is that it gets superseded with a better compression technology and then there will be a method of converting JPG to newPG. More likely though, the new formats will have a backwards compatible mode that means there will be support for JPEGs with any new coding format.

Same with RAW files IMHO.

Just keep enough backups. Over time, your backup (and main storage) will be replaced by newer, higher capacity drives so renewing the magnetic write to the platter. Personally, I store everything on HDDs and have multiple copies (the main backups are checked for data integrity on a weekly basis via checksums so I know they are OK )

 

[neil_g]

ignore

 

[DigitalRelish]

what do you class as future generations? for example get too far down line and technology becomes obsolete so its all a bit pointless thinking too far in advance.

i mean for example currently if you have an old cinefilm you take it to a specialist to get it converted to dvd (etc). i wouldnt worry too much beyond 50 years (average lifespan of archive grade dvd/blu-ray), beyond that leave it up to the next person to convert to the current tech

I'm thinking kids, grand kids, as far as you want to consider!

 

[DigitalRelish]

I don't think JPG will become obsolete - it is too widely a used technology.

I'm sure we used to feel the same way about VHS!

Only time will tell, but I'm starting to think burning onto film is the way forward!

 

[mrgubby]

I'm sure we used to feel the same way about VHS!

Only time will tell, but I'm starting to think burning onto film is the way forward!

Jpeg is a data standard while VHS is a physical standard / medium.

It will be a long long long time before we "loose" the ability to decode a jpeg file

 

[DigitalRelish]

Jpeg is a data standard while VHS is a physical standard / medium.

It will be a long long long time before we "loose" the ability to decode a jpeg file

The files still need to be stored somewhere!

 

[arad85]

The files still need to be stored somewhere!

But the medium will be digital. I have all my media stored digitally now. If a new digital technology comes along, I'll be able to plug it into my PC in some way and copy files over.

The only thing I need over and above what I already have is some form of off-site storage.

 

[Asha]

Recently, I've been pondering over the longevity of my digital images. I've negatives which are almost as old as I am which will be useable for many more years to come, but how will my variety of different raw file formats and JPGs fare?

I'm sure current formats will be supported for the foreseeable, but I wonder what will happen to the billions of images out there when JPG eventually becomes obsolete?

Also, I'm fairly happy with my current RAID (plus back-ups) set-up, but has anyone considered their approach to long-term archiving i.e. making sure your images are accessible for future generations?

Magnetic storage can lose its integrity over time and optical media eventually fails too. How will we keep our personal libraries intact?

Is the way forward to rely in third party specialists to keep our data secure and refreshed as is needed? I guess we're still in the relative infancy of using digital photos as opposed to film based photos, but we should be thinking about this now, in my opinion.

Any thoughts?

I would reckon this has already been thought out by the powers that be ....Didigital is just that ...digital.
Ok many different formats but I doubt that they will become obsolete in so far as being able to transfer them onto whatever format is needed to be viewed by future generations.
just out of interest, do you print any of your jpeg files onto paper?
I know of many people that simply store them digitally which is fine but they never bother to view/share them because it means "booting the computer".
I don't print every shot that I take ...cost wise it's not feasable but I do print off those treasured snap shots of family, pets etc even if only as contact sheets.

 

[petersmart]

But the medium will be digital. I have all my media stored digitally now. If a new digital technology comes along, I'll be able to plug it into my PC in some way and copy files over.

The only thing I need over and above what I already have is some form of off-site storage.

I use Hotmail's SkyDrive - 25Gb FREE for every account.

.

 

[arad85]

I use Hotmail's SkyDrive - 25Gb FREE for every account.

.

My backup disk has 700G used and that's without the 3+Tbytes of video I have...

 

[acetone]

I'm with Neil , the next 50 years is plenty, and formats only become obsolete if YOU let them, I still have a turntable and a VHS player so the old formats are still usable at my house, and I can transfer to the latest format when ever I wish. If you keep a computer and the software then you'll aways be able to access the files.

The BBC said they could not decode all the Doomsday disks, untill somebody popped up as said Hey I have a player, and now it's all on line.

Cloud storage is not practicable at the moment as we have too much data and too slow internet conections, but it will come in time, as will affordable very large SSD (within 5 years)

 

[DigitalRelish]

I would reckon this has already been thought out by the powers that be ....Didigital is just that ...digital.
Ok many different formats but I doubt that they will become obsolete in so far as being able to transfer them onto whatever format is needed to be viewed by future generations.
just out of interest, do you print any of your jpeg files onto paper?
I know of many people that simply store them digitally which is fine but they never bother to view/share them because it means "booting the computer".
I don't print every shot that I take ...cost wise it's not feasable but I do print off those treasured snap shots of family, pets etc even if only as contact sheets.

Over the past 3 years I've shot between 300-400GB per year; a mixture of personal and commercial. Especially, with a 7-month old baby in tow, there are far too many photos I'd like to print! I have printed some and I want to print more, but cost and space is restrictive.

It may well be that the best solution for individual photographers is to continually migrate the data onto more capacious media as technology progresses.