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Will Digital Images Last?
PCMagazine have published a short article which wonders how long digital photos will last for…
“I should be happy. I’m a proponent of digital photography and digital video. I use it and write about it. But I’m also plagued by little panic attacks. I haven’t taken a 35mm photo of my kids in months. What if my computer hard drive dies? I have all my photos backed up on a CD, but what if I lose that or it somehow becomes corrupted?”
Website: PCMagazine - Will Digital Images Last?
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#1 rama roberts
The flipside is- if all you have is physical media (negatives, prints) and you have a flood or fire or theft, then you've lost the one and only copy you've got. With digital, you can make many backup copies, even have geographical redundancy in case of natural disasters.
I'm sure there are tons of people out there who have lost all their digipics to a lost harddrive or a failed CD-R, but that's not the fault of the medium, that's the fault of the user. Just like any important data, its important to have backups, and backups of backups if its important to you.
All this news about the short life of CD-Rs will hopefully open the eyes of more users out there that it is not a permanent means of storage.
4:11 pm - Friday, May 14, 2004
#2 Ray Sims
I agree that some of the fault of losing digipics lies with the user, but with film opening a strange piece of mail won't erase all my pictures. Computers are much more complicated than slides and negatives. It's the subtle interaction of doing something in outlook that will erase all your pictures that makes it seem like a less permanent medium.
Also data formats change very frequently. I can still get a print from a negative that I took 30 years ago, but how many people still have 5.25" floppy drives in their computers? Right now CD-Rs and keychain flash drives are replacing the 3.5" floppy, next it will be DVDs replacing CDs. All this in just a few short years. Keeping up to date with the latest storage technologies and moving pictures from one medium to another in order to keep them safe doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in digital for me.
6:39 pm - Friday, May 14, 2004
#3 rama roberts
Ray,
you make good points- but again, this is no fault of the medium.
Sure, its a lot of trouble keeping up with the latest in storage mediums- and yes, it means either transferring your data to a modern storage mechanism, or making sure you have a surefire way of accessing your old storage on dated technology in the years to come. But even with all the pain associated with digital mediums, the benefits outweigh physical film (IMHO. I didn't get into photography until my first digicam, mostly due to the cost associated with development).
As people become more and more dependant on computers as their personal data storage devices (taxes, email archives, photos, etc), we will all be forced to backup that data or live in fear it may get lost. Still- I would rather have the digital version (assuming its on par quality-wise) as the physical version any day. Its just exponentially more flexible.
10:18 pm - Friday, May 14, 2004