The Great Digital Image Migration ... and Fading History

I've written about this before, but I think it's worth repeating.  Storing your precious photographs on optical CDs (and DVDs) with NO magnetic backup (i.e. an external hard disk) is a sure way to lose your pictures forever.

I spent a number of years and lots of dollars continuously perfecting my skills as a photographer.  I knew not only how to take a good picture, but how to produce an art-quality print.  In doing a major personal housecleaning this last weekend, I realized that even though I still had darkroom equipment, it no longer made economic sense (for me) to make conventional prints in the future.  My beloved darkroom enlargers are now junk.  However, my prints and negatives will last many years.

Now, I'm in the world of digital photography and having more fun than I ever did using film, although part of the "art" is missing.  I take a lot of images, about 6,000 in the last year.  As the collection grows, the need to archive some of it becomes part of the process. 

Here's the point, again ... DO NOT expect to store your photographs more than a couple years on disks that you burn yourself.  Eventually, the organic dyes used in the disk shift, which renders the CD or DVD unreadable.  I've got plenty of examples of old stored data CDs that might as well be blank.  As far as my CD drives in my computers are concerned, they are.

Instead, take advantage of cheaper and cheaper external hard drives.  You can now have a TERABYTE of storage in an external hard drive for less than $150.  That's roughly a thousand gigabytes.  Make sure duplicate copies of images exist on more than just one drive, because, eventually the drives die, too.  But, if you have a "redundant" drive with the same images, you're likely to be in good shape as the chances of both drives dying at the same time is minimal.  You replace the dead drive and duplicate from whichever drive still works.

Oh, yeah ... I'm still going to back up my images to optical disks, but I'll refresh the backup periodically.  That data is stored well away from where I live ... because there's always the possibility of tornadoes, hurricanes, fire, lightning, floods, riots, landslides, etc.   After all, I could lose both drives that way, and where would I be?  Well, I'd be restoring my images to a new computer from that backup to the backup. 

Save your personal and family history, don't let it digitally fade away.