Storing Images

[ashcraft]

I am starting to amass pictures that I would like to save for presentations, etc. What is the best way to store pictures for long term recall? I have heard that CD's start loosing integrity after awhile. Is this true?

Brent Ashcraft

[Guest N.AL.hunter]

I actually wrote a paper on this topic for my Masters degree, so here it goes...

Most modern CDs will last a lot longer than you (sorry for that). To hedge your bet, buy premium CDs. Also, back them up by making multiple copies and storing them in different places. To properly store them, they should be:

1. in a solid case that supports them by the hub. 2. stored in the cases upright, just like books (Do not lay your CDs or DVDs flat!) 3. kept out of direct light. 4. kept from freezing temps or temps above 70 F. 5. never written on with a marker (you can mark carefully around the inner hub area) (don't trust CD/DVD pens/markers). 6. kept away from magnetic/electric fields as much as possible. 7. cleaned by wiping them outward from the hub to the edge, never wiping them around the flat face. 8. never be left in your car. 9. never be left in your computer or player when not being used...

And I have probably forgotten some stuff. You could also use solid state devices like flash/USB sticks or even camera cards like SD or CF. These have advantages of no moving parts in the readers. And they are more sturdy, but they also need proper care and storage for long term storage concerns.

For really concerned people, you might want to keep your files up to date by migrating them to newer formats when necessary, but be forewarned, every time a migration takes place, some of the data is lost.

[Gatorman]

Redundancy is key, I keep my photo's on two separate hard drives and soon i will back them up on a dvd but i have a lot of sorting and sizing to do.

[Guest N.AL.hunter]

Anson,

Be careful about storage on DVD format. Most computers can only read from the DVD and cannot copy from them. CD would be better.

[Archimedes]

Hi ashcraft,

After reading this post I went to my oldest CDs, about 11-12 years old and had no problems accessing any photo, I have always made two CD/DVD copies of my photo files. They are kept in a cabinet with doors in the house, and in plastic CD cases. N.AL.hunter seems to have covered all, but my major concern is future CD software support in new computers. Below is an Ice Flower form a CD 11+ years old.

[tracer]

It's my understanding that digitized magnetic media tends to degrade over time because the magnetized areas are very close together and tend to act on each other and "creep". I defragment my hard disks occasionally to freshen things up. Optical "burned" data has different issues but none of the digitization methods of which I'm aware are "permanent" in my estimation. Having said that, they can last a long time, and when I've lost data, it's frequently been because file formats became obsolete and/or applications utilizing them were too old. Floppie disks were the most unreliable media in recent history, I think.

What I would do would be to dump pictures you take onto your hard disk, copy them to CDs/DVDs, keep those at another location from the hard disk, and then you can delete the photos from your camera media because you have them two other places. Then go back every ten years or so and reburn the photos to newer media. It's all just zeros and ones so it duplicates perfectly every time, unlike your old VCR tapes.