Here’s my nightmare… I still cry when I think about it. Most of what is on my computer’s hard drive can be replaced with some work with the exception of our family photos collected over many years. It was about 6 years ago and I had decided that I needed to backup the photographs that had accumulated on the computer’s hard drive to safe-guard them. The plan was to burn backup disks then I thought I’d be real intelligent and upload them to SnapFish for additional protection. A real genius would have uploaded the photos first, but I decided to burn the disks first. The disk drive malfunctioned and froze and I was forced to restart the computer. After the reboot, I could not find one photo. Everything was gone . Not on the disk, not on the hard drive. Gone. Gone all the family photos, our trip to Ireland, our trip to England… gone. EVERYTHING. I screamed and cried… called tech support and looked all over the computer, they were all gone. I even called in a reputable computer repair company and paid them too much money to scan my computer’s hard drive byte by byte for the photos. Nothing. If only I had uploaded the pictures first.
Don't risk losing your family's memories
We can’t escape technology. We’re texting, tweeting, chatting, and emailing in record numbers. And to do this, we are becoming increasingly sophisticated with our usage of all things technical. It’s not unusual to see a grandma online chatting with her grandkids and receiving uploads of vacation photos; or paying bills online. Everyday, new devices are available to surf the net faster, watch and record TV shows and movies and digitally store and record our lives.
But did you know that a hard drive lasts about five years, low range CDs’ and DVDs’ longevity is also about five years? You can’t assume that your family photo album will still be viewable on that CD for the next generation. Chances are the next generation won’t even be using CD drives. It’s up to you to make sure that you take steps to keep your memories (data) moving onto new formats at a minimum of about once every ten years. This is referred to as “data migration”. And as we leave our traditional record-keeping and paper archiving behind us, we make ourselves vulnerable to yet another plague… Data Rot.
Computer formats come and go leaving some users with data no longer compatible with software or hardware; this is called Data Rot. If you’re a “Baby Boomer” chances are you’re already a victim. Don’t we all have boxes of 8mm movie reels documenting our family’s history? Many of the machines used to capture, record and store this information are so obsolete they don’t work anymore or just don’t exist.
This isn’t a small problem. The Library of Congress has been fighting Data Rot since the early ‘90s. Laura Campbell, chief officer of the Library of Congress, which houses the world’s largest collection of movies and recorded sound, as well as 56 million manuscripts, six million maps, and a million and a half rare books has overseen a multimillion-dollar effort to digitize the Library’s most precious holdings, both to preserve them and to make them available to the public on the Internet. Every day, in back rooms in Washington, D.C., library employees are painstakingly digitizing the library’s 16 million photos, prints, and posters … one scan at a time.
Who doesn’t remember the 8 track tape deck? The audio for my first wedding ceremony was recorded on a giant reel-to-reel tape deck. By now, even if I had a tape deck, the recording probably would be inaudible due to the tape breaking down over time.
So how do we protect ourselves? As storage media technology changes we need to make the effort to move or ‘migrate’ our data to that new media of the day. To take this one step further, photographers/archivists also suggest the following:
- Maintain at least three copies of the data on at least three different physical media. One copy on your hard drive, one copy on a CD and one copy on a thumb drive or SD card.
- Maintain the data in at least two geographically different locations. One set at your home and one set off site. You can use online photo storage/sharing companies like Kodak, Flicker, Smug Mug, or Hp’s Snapfish for photos. Look into online back up services if you have extensive data that would be hard to replace… BackBlaze, Carbonite, and MobileMe all work with PCs or Macs.
Don’t be a victim of Data Rot. Migrate data and Backup often.
Posted by:Linda Hawkinson
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I try not to think about it… when I do, I still get a sick feeling in my stomach. Now I backup the backups. My son told me years ago that soon there would be no CDs. 6 months later, Apple introduced their MacBook Air notebook with no cd drive. It’s definitely going that direction, so we better start getting ready now.
I am working on Shutterfly and putting albums together…. I lost out to Kodak….. computer glitch once again. So starting at square one also. I have learned my lesson….
Things are changing by the minute with everything technical… how are you keeping up with it all?