Best way to preserve digital photos forever?

[melbaby]

I have read several different thoughts on the best method for storing and preserving precious digital pictures in photo magazines. I had thought that storing them on cd's was good enough, but then have read and heard from a museum expert that an external hard drive is a must, in addtition to cd storage, and even back up cds. He says that cds will start to go bad in 5 yrs. and I had never heard of that short bleak prospect before. Scares me into thinking I'd better get them all on an external hard drive.

Has anyone heard of cds failing in a few years? Guess it's not worth the risk to wait and see.....wondering what the serious photographers out there know about this. Thanks, Melodie

[Sachari]

yup its true, sometimes CD's go bad even faster than that, sometimes they last alot longer. but CD-R's/CD-RW's use a technology that basically means their average life is around 5 years.
at work a group of people decided to be clever and backup all their data onto CD's. they then deleted all the files from the main server, which was regularly backed up. a few years later (last year) they needed the data, so they popped the CD in... and the data had gone. on further investigation, they realised all the data was lost. so they phone IT support, asked for the data to be retrieved from the backup. unfortunatly as the data was destroyed from the backup 3 months after they destroyed it themselves, no can do. good laughs all round (apart from for that team.)
anyway, moral of the story, CD-R's and CD-RW's do go bad.

I was actually contemplating this issue (data storage of digital photo's) myself today.
Data tapes (like used for regular computer data backup) are the best, but obv. you would need to invest in the equipment, and as data has to be retrieved sequentially I'd only recommend it for archiving.
Hard Disk drive is probably the best bet for regular storage.
CD's would be more of a sharing medium.

[famjad21]

I can add the I have experienced failures of both external hard drives and CD's.

I recommend using an external hard drive and then CD or DVD backups of the hard drive files then backups of the backups and don't use the same brand of CD for the backups.

I recently opened a whole package of Sony CD's (6 years old)and found they had all deteriorated.

[shootem]

Hi Mel,
Current (will certainly change) thoughts for storage are:
External Hardrive PLUS
DVD of one top name brand PLUS
a second DVD of equal name brand.
Don't skimp on these.
Reburn every couple of years.
External hardrives are relativley inexpensive, and can hold LOTS of GB's of our precious photos.

Then - hold our breath - and hope the industry doesn't change formats too soon.

Actually the industry is working on establishing a universal "raw" file - that can be read by any photo edit program - similar to the Adobe DNG idea... A bit off the subject, but a matter of concern. Just who owns the rights to the camera raw files? Nikon? Canon? making us use proprietory programs to open them???

If you are interested, there is a questionaire that expires on March 15th, trying to get photographers views on this subject here:

http://www.openraw.org/

If you shoot in RAW - you might want to add your 2 cents worth....

Sorry Mel to get off the subject - just kinda rambled into it.....
Cheers,
Carolyn

[melbaby]

I thank all of you for taking the time to give some advice and feedback on the matter....hope it shed some new light for a lot of people too....I had no idea that cd's may dissappear or whatever in time....so I am totally set to back up all my cd's and pics with the external hard drive method, .....and lo and behold I received the mystery gift for my birthday today.

Melodie

[shootem]

HiYa Mel, Happy Birthday!!!

Don't forget - hard drives can fail.... make copies on DVD's also....

Your friendly advisor....

Carolyn

[melbaby]

Thanks much Carolyn!

Yes, i will also back them up with dvds'. I had backed all mine up so far on cd's so i guess i'll go thru them all again, and put them on the hard drive, and dvd.

ps, I was hoping to hear your opinion on the matter especially! Mel

[MsSage]

Thank you for the information. I too did not know CD's lost info.
Looks like kids will have to wait on thier "own" computer.