How to digitize precious photos?

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

Photomax wrote:
> Our traditional photographs are deteriorating with every passing
> moment. Faces and colors fade with the passage of time and someday
> these visual memories will be lost forever.

In addition to a blatant commercial message where it does not belong,
the message is a lie.

The lie part is the idea that somehow digital images are archival and
are safe from the ravages of time.

The fact is digital storage media is often less reliable than
traditional photographic media. Also the media and or file types may be
impossible or very difficult to read ten years from now when advances in
technology have made them as easy to use as an 8 track tape.

My advice for anyone who really wants to preserve images is to have them
digitalized by a honest reliable service, not one that would post this kind
of ad. and keep one copy and send the other to someone you know far away.
Think what happened on the Gulf Cost this year. Having copies stored
hundreds of miles away is a good idea. I have mine with my son and daughter
who live 3,000 miles apart. Also have good archival prints made of those
that you really treasure and keep one set and send the other as above. Good
archival prints will last over 100 years and don't need special computers or
programs to view.


--
Joseph Meehan

Dia duit

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

On the contrary, making your photos public is how some of these sites
make money.

Jeremy wrote:

> What guarantee is there that one's private family photos won't be up for
> grabs by anyone, for any reason?

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

Ron Hunter wrote:
> Joseph Meehan wrote:
>> Photomax wrote:
>>> Our traditional photographs are deteriorating with every passing
>>> moment. Faces and colors fade with the passage of time and someday
>>> these visual memories will be lost forever.
>>
>> In addition to a blatant commercial message where it does not
>> belong, the message is a lie.
>>
>> The lie part is the idea that somehow digital images are
>> archival and are safe from the ravages of time.
>>
>> The fact is digital storage media is often less reliable than
>> traditional photographic media. Also the media and or file types may
>> be impossible or very difficult to read ten years from now when
>> advances in technology have made them as easy to use as an 8 track
>> tape.
>> My advice for anyone who really wants to preserve images is to
>> have them digitalized by a honest reliable service, not one that
>> would post this kind of ad. and keep one copy and send the other to
>> someone you know far away. Think what happened on the Gulf Cost this
>> year. Having copies stored hundreds of miles away is a good idea. I have
>> mine with my son and daughter who live 3,000 miles apart. Also have good
>> archival prints made of those that you really
>> treasure and keep one set and send the other as above. Good
>> archival prints will last over 100 years and don't need special
>> computers or programs to view.
>>
> I have old floppy disks with pictures from over 25 years ago. I can
> still read them on my current computer. I think your fears of
> media/storage format obsolescence are unfounded.
> Since digital images don't suffer deterioration from repeated copying,
> the only downside to archival storage is a need to change media every
> now and then.

Floppy disk have a live of from 3-20 years. I find that they were far
tool flaky after three years to trust them. I worked in a government tax
environment and we could not afford to loose data. After five years were
were loosing about 50% of our disk. With a lot of effort we were able to
recover much of the data. I suggest that you keep multiple copies of those
files (the expensive gold CD's have much better, but not extremely long
life). Keep more than one copy and make a regular schedule of making new
copies every few years. That holds true for files on your hard drive as
well. The worse thing we lost was the only electronic copy of a major
manual that was one 5 inch disk. Almost all of the disk were bad some years
later when we needed to access that data and the only printed copies
remaining were poor copies of copies and would not OCR well.


--
Joseph Meehan

Dia duit

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

[A complimentary Cc of this posting was sent to
David J. Littleboy
<davidjl@gol.com>], who wrote in article <dhgjas$cuj$1@nnrp.gol.com>:
> By the way, it looks as though Dell (Japan) is selling a 120GB USB2.0
> external hard drive for just a tad over US$100. If you consider the
> difficulty of storing (and the time for burning) 150 CDs, that's looking
> mighty attractive.

USB enclosure for 3.25'' drive can be had here for $9. Add $90 for
300GB Seagate drive, and you get $100 for 300GB USB storage system.
(One needs to watch xpbargains.com; and Seagate matters because only
them have 5year warranty on non-SCSI drives.)

However, the major problem with this setup is that *external unscrewed
drives* do NOT have higher reliability than floppies/CDs/DVDs. You
need to screw them to something stable to get life expectations well
above 1 year... Currently, the storage situation is lose/lose...

Hope this helps,
Ilya