[Leica] If You Really Want Your Pictures to Last...

[abridge at mac.com (Adam Bridge)]

On Saturday, May 1, 2004 George Lottermoser thoughtfully wrote:

>While I agree that paper will age and change and in some cases disintegrate
over 
>time. The confidence which Brian express, "bits last forever." seems quite 
>theoretical. Forever is a long time and those bits have to reside somewhere on 
>something. And that something has no more possibility of making it through time 
>than fine paper. We've been through this many times. In theory, in ideal 
>conditions, if you keep migrating, etc etc. Reality - it will be as difficult
to 
>read your CDs and DVDs in 75 years as it would be to play your Edison Cylinders 
>today. Will all those with wire recorders please raise your hands - what? you 
>didn't migrate your wire?

I started to archive to CD (too small a capacity) then to DVD (too slow) and
finally I bought a FireWire enclosure with drive trays and some 180 GB drives
from Frys that were on sale at a darn decent price. I keep the drives, in their
trays, in the dark, in an a/c room, in boxes. That SEEMS like about the best I
can do. So far no problems either finding things or accessing them. Forcing
myself to build the data archive for the images thought - THAT'S a problem.

And, of course, I keep the negatives although the TCN ones will certainly fade.

Still, I have confidence that the on-disk file structure will last quite a while
and that I'll have both warnings and alternatives when it does change.

I don't think I've ever seen a spec for hard drives in "storage" mode. Brian?
What do you think? What's the point of failure and how often should I spin up a
drive? Monthly?

Adam