Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/06/20
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Digital can be archival. It's just not automatic yet. I have digital archives that date back to 1967, which is when I first started keeping digital information that mattered to me. It is now 36 years later, and I still have all of it. Today my digital archives are about 100GB; I think that they didn't exceed 10MB until 1970. The "secret" is very simple. Make a copy onto two different media every 5 years. At least one of those media will still be around in 5 more years, and you can repeat the process. Currently my digital archives live in 3 forms: IDE hard drives that are turned off and sealed DVD ROMs (33 ROMs hold everything) DDS3 DAT tapes (10 tapes hold everything) I also keep everything online on regular servers. At some point in the future some new storage technology will come along, and I will copy my archives onto that. I suspect that if I die before a truly archival technology comes along, my children will have no trouble reading any of the archival media and continuing this tradition of copying should that be what they want. I also have boxes and boxes of B&W photographic prints processed to be archival. Those will outlast the cockroaches. - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html