BBC: Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever

[CameraQuest]

BBC article: Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever​

if the link does not work, search for "Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever"

"If you used a digital camera in the early 2000s, there's a good chance whole chapters of your life have been erased.
A generation of photos has vanished on broken hard drives and defunct websites."

Probably true for many, but probably not so much for RFF members

are your negatives starting to look a better record of your life than digital memories ?

 

[Cascadilla]

When I bought my first DSLR in 2004 I was vaguely aware of this and bought an external hard drive and burned duplicate CDs of every job that I shot. I still have the CDs (the gold ones that were rated for 300 years) and eventually backed everything I had kept onto M discs that were rated at 1000 years. I also still have working CD,DVD and BluRay burner/players so I can still access the files. But for the last few years I have gone with multiple hard drives since I am getting close to retiring from commercial work and so far that has been sufficient. When I see that a hard drive is getting to 2/3-3/4 capacity and is more than 3 years old I migrate the files to a new drive before anything really terrible happens. I strongly doubt that anyone will be that concerned about anything I have in 50 years and I am certain that there will be new file formats, new connecting cables/protocols and generally incompatible devices unless someone actively migrates these files to new devices on a regular basis. I don't envy anybody in charge of maintaining a digital collection over the long term unless they have healthy budgets and competent people to make that happen.

 

[boojum]

When I bought my first DSLR in 2004 I was vaguely aware of this and bought an external hard drive and burned duplicate CDs of every job that I shot. I still have the CDs (the gold ones that were rated for 300 years) and eventually backed everything I had kept onto M discs that were rated at 1000 years. I also still have working CD,DVD and BluRay burner/players so I can still access the files. But for the last few years I have gone with multiple hard drives since I am getting close to retiring from commercial work and so far that has been sufficient. When I see that a hard drive is getting to 2/3-3/4 capacity and is more than 3 years old I migrate the files to a new drive before anything really terrible happens. I strongly doubt that anyone will be that concerned about anything I have in 50 years and I am certain that there will be new file formats, new connecting cables/protocols and generally incompatible devices unless someone actively migrates these files to new devices on a regular basis. I don't envy anybody in charge of maintaining a digital collection over the long term unless they have healthy budgets and competent people to make that happen.

I am old school HD thinking. It is not a question of if it will fail but when. Copying HD's as they age is a great idea. And save the old ones, "just in case."

 

[rick oleson]

BBC article: Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever​

if the link does not work, search for "Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever"

"If you used a digital camera in the early 2000s, there's a good chance whole chapters of your life have been erased.
A generation of photos has vanished on broken hard drives and defunct websites."

Probably true for many, but probably not so much for RFF members

are your negatives starting to look a better record of your life than digital memories ?

I lost thousands of photos in 2008 to a crash of the hard drive that I had saved them on. The entire year of 2007 disappeared. I managed to recover some from 2008 that I had copied in multiple places. I back everything up on a separate drive now, even though most of them are random junk.

But what about storage formats and interfaces becoming obsolete? CD drives are gone from all but antique computers like mine, the USB system keeps evolving, changing, adding new connectors and obsoleting others, connections are going wireless. What will someone do with my portable hard drive in the future when there is nothing to plug it into any more?

 

[Alpsman]

That's THE reason I shoot in black and white.
I have 70-year-old negatives from my ancestors, and if necessary, I can hold them up to daylight and use a magnifying glass to see who's in them.

I can view some even older prints without a magnifying glass, though I do need glasses.

 

[aw614]

Photobucket did a number on a bunch of car forums killing a bunch of diy guide photos.

I know i've lost a few photos from hard drives crashing, etc. it sucks.