Photos. How Do you save them FOREVER?

[Industrial Toys]

This has bothered me for a while. What media will stand the test of time?

I just inserted a USB stick into an old windows 98 (DELL) computer, and although there were hundreds of pictures on that stick, that I routinely looked at or added some, only the last picture I added was there. The Computer has not been connected to a network or outside world for a while. It's turned on and used evry day, running various FREE software, that costs money to put on my newer computer.

 

[BRMyers]

Printing them out seems to be some of the longest lasting.

Unfortunately, digital media will continue to change and not guaranteed backwards compatibility. In addition, just as photos fade with time, my understanding is that computer media slowly breaks down with time also.

 

[EddieWalker]

I have a box full of negatives from the 80s, and 90s that I will probably never do anything with. Dozens of photo albums that I doubt that I will ever look at again. I post all my good pics on FB, but rarely go back to look for something. I take thousands of pictures a year and delete most of them. Every year I try to burn a back up disk to save what I have on my computer, especially my Word Documents. But now i have dozens of those disks that I'm sure i will never look at. For something like my wedding or a vacation to Europe, we make a Picaboo picture book. I'm also doing the same thin for each year of my grandsons life and give it to his parents for Christmas.

 

[PEJ5]

Look carefully on your computer's drive in hopes that you left a copy of your photos there. Is it possible that you own more than one memory stick and your photos are safely stored on another stick? I hope you find them.

To answer your question, in my opinion, there is no such thing as long term storage that you can guarantee. 100MB floppies gave way to 700MB CDs, gave way to 4.5GB DVDs, gave way to 500GB USB connected hard drives, and so on.

First, I refuse to purchase USB hard drives because they can or will seize up after a year of no use. USB sticks are too small and grow legs and disappear. I might consider a sold state portable drive but they have not proven themselves for long term use. As it is creating your own CDs of data has only been a thing for maybe 30 years and we do not know how long they will last. If you wrote on your CDs with a Sharpie, best to move the files before it becomes unreadable.

I keep at least two copies of important data (photos and files) on at least two different media types and try never store them both in the same building. The moving target of current technology as described above helps me decide.

I have old photos on CDs and on my home PC hard drive. I have newer ones on my PC or phone with a backup copying Google drive and/or Microsoft OneDrive. Three copies is better so I am slow to delete or discard old technology as long as I have a way to read it.

I now use my Google drive as my primary location to create new files. Of course, a good Internet connection is required.

You have to be methodical and it pays to setup automatic backups so you do not have to remember yourself. Our home computer has two internal hard drives and we use a backup program to backup changes on the C: drive nightly.
Automatic copies and backup are two different things. If I make a mistake and delete data on the primary copy and am just doing a nightly copy, I'll soon have two bad copies. Have a weekly extra copy that just gets filed away off site maybe with the date in the file name.This applies to active files that change regularly like your financial spreadsheet or accounting software.

Good luck

Peter

 

[Industrial Toys]

People used to cherish that picture or two of someone. Has it all been so devalued with all the pictures? Some may take more pictures in a day than some people took in a lifetime.

 

[KennyG]

USB drives are much more reliable than in the past, so I have some confidence in long term USB storage. That said, I keep the camera memory cards, store a copy on the hard drive of my desktop computer, and keep an additional copy on a removable hard drive. When I can, I sort through the photos from a specific trip or event and create a file of only the best that I store on a USB drive and a hard drive. In addition, I keep track of changes to JPEG standards to make sure the format will be readable in the future. So far, JPEG seems like the long term solution to formats.

 

[SJay]

I have a network storage device that is also a Raid drive. Store all my photos on it. Very reliable

 

[cdaigle430]

best way to do it is to back it up on a hdd and have a backup of that one, lock one in a fireproof\waterproof safe. Every 5 to 10 years upgrade those disk drives to a larger more up to date storage technology. Some people will buy cloud storage and back up their files and pics from a home storage drive to that.
Never keep it on the same device for more than 10 years. Cloud storage is good if you use a reliable hosted one that has proper security and backups.

 

[tookielee]

I had a USB flash drive that I accidentally left in pants at least 4 times in 3 years,
went thru wash and dry, never missed a beat - IMO, that, or a CD/DVD, stored
in a climate controlled environment, are the most reliable to date. But if the pictures
are important to you, I'd back them up in at least one other device

 

[Chris616]

Unfortunately there is no proven digital storage technology that will store forever, but the same could be said for physical photos, negatives and slides. The key to ensuring that digital data isn't lost is redundancy. Store the data in multiple places. I cringe every time that I hear about people storing important data in just one place.

If you don't have backups of the photos somewhere and want help trying to recover the data there are quite a few computer savvy folks on the board. Let us know.

Chris