In one of our wards in Seattle, a family's house burned down. Of all the needs that family had, the one that I remember was a request for people to come up with pictures of the family members.
This prompted many discussions in the ward and community about how to protect pictures, journals and keepsakes in the event of a fire.
We're faced each day with a growing, and increasingly more dangerous, threat to our personal memories: digital media. Digital media isn't just for techno-hobbyists anymore. billions of pictures are being amassed on the hard drives of people all over the globe. The only trouble is that too many people aren't being careful.
If we were to do a straw poll of ten individuals who have computers in their homes, I would wager (if I were a wagerer) that nine of the ten are taking digital pictures and that only three of those nine regularly backs them up. Remember, I'm talking about normal people now, not just nerds. Whatever the exact numbers, there are many, many people who are not backing up their digital pictures and it's scary.
My daughter had the chance of a lifetime to play the young Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker at probably the largest, most successful theatre in Salt Lake City. It was a big deal. We took many pictures before and after the shows: the cast goofing around, people getting their makeup on, actors posing for the camera, etc.
Recently we went back to look at the pictures, and they were gone. Somehow they had disappeared from the computer and I hadn't backed up since those pictures were taken.
The ending is a happy one--I found digital copies of the pictures on an old laptop I had copied them to for some reason, but the episode (and my near-death experience when I told my wife I couldn't find the pictures) reminded me to make regular and frequent backups of our digital pictures and videos.
I hope you are doing the same!!
Spread the word...
(Feel free to share your methods for archiving media in the comments section.)
One additional point.
ReplyDeleteDigitizing your old-school pictures and videos is a great method of archival. You can buy scanners which will scan your negatives at very high resolution. Additional, DV camers are great for archiving your old VHS tapes. In both cases, find offsite places to store your archival copies: a family members, an archival service, etc.
I think its best to have more than one backup location, but one of them should definitely be Mozy.com.
ReplyDelete2gb free storage, or $5 for unlimited. Set the folders you want backed up and whenever you're not using the computer it sends the changes to your files to their servers over an encrypted connection. It keeps a version history, so you can get a version of a file from a month ago. Restoring files is super-easy too (no point having a backup if its difficult to restore from.)
Three weeks after our son was born my computer died and the last weeks worth of photos hadn't been backed up anywhere except for Mozy.
Great, quick support, whenever I've needed it.
I've been using their free service for over a year, and despite being generally picky I haven't found anything to complain about.
I went through that when I was 19. My parents house in Washington state had a devastating fire. The house was totally destroyed, but because my parents had stored the pictures packed tightly together in boxes, many pictures survived, with just burnt edges or some water damage to show for it. Those have now been all scanned.
ReplyDeleteMy computer runs a nightly backup and at least once a month I burn everything to DVDs for backup. I will usually take a copy of the DVD backup to work or mail it to a family member. As you said, many of the people I know don't back up their data regularly and those that do, often store their backups with all their other media right next to the computer. The burden of being the technical ones in the family, it often falls to us to make sure our parents and grandparents and Great Aunts have some automated backup method.
I back up weekly to an external hard drive. I know that is not sufficient in frequency or offsite backup, but I have about 70GB of files that I backup. I'm not sure what the answer is for large storage. I could backup to DVDs but that requires discipline and organization and it's easy to slip.
ReplyDeleteI just saw a ad for a HP desktop that has 2 160GB hard drives and uses RAID 1 to mirror the data. That would take out some of the hassle, but what if the home or building burns down, or if some files are accidentally deleted.
I used Mozy sometime ago, but I ran into some technical difficulties and at the time they didn't have an unlimited option. I may look at that again. However, I wonder how long it will take to backup 70GB online....
It seems that the future is online storage in one way or another. I'm moving more to online documents through Google docs and photo storage like Flickr and other methods for music. Then I don't have to worry about backups.
Anyway, this is a good topic.
We have recently taken up the task to archive all of our family photos. A large task indeed as it includes slides and negatives. The good is that we found a great scanner that has a dpi of 4800 x 9600, which means the older, smaller photos can be blown up without pixelation. The bad is that even at 600-900dpi, the size of the file can get up to 150MB!
ReplyDeleteI added a 750GB drive to my system to accommodate the local storage, but backup is going to be a challenge. Right now, I don't have a terrible amount to backup, so it will fit to a dual layer DVD just fine. My initial plan is to do this monthly then store in a safe deposit box. Long term though might be a bit more daunting. Maybe by the time I actually get around to scanning all of the photos, blue ray burners will be reasonable :-), Believe it or not, my wife tried to talk me into some kind of tape backup solution, but I had a hard time justifying $1k and up to do this.
I have also considered mirroring the drive. Although a great solution if the drive goes bad, doesn't address if there is a disaster of some kind.
Still looking for the perfect solution!
Digital memories are often ones you want to share, and spreading them around can be the easiest way to protect them.
ReplyDeleteWe utilize a digital camera and a digital video recorder. Any storage in the house containing something important is on a RAID1 array (drives are cheap these days and many systems come with built in RAID, RAID1 is easy to set up, or recover, and often the easiest to migrate to a new system if needed), content is periodically burnt to DVDs for distribution to parents, relatives, friends, etc. and an extra copy is made which is stored in a firesafe designed for media.
Though we produce quite a few pictures and video, the dropping cost of storage has allowed us to keep everything "on drive" as well for quick and easy access should we want to pull it up.
We also encourage family members to share their own photos/video with us that we often add to our system - this way even though we may not be able to live close enough to them to help with their "backup", we've got copies should they lose everything - it's also coming in quite handy with various projects preserving family memories and tying media to our genealogy work.
We currently have some family restoration efforts underway with various old media types we want to digitize to prevent further degeneration and to ensure their continued availability for future generations. I very much regret that in most instances I do not have media of my ancestors, either because the technology didn't exist then, or what was made wasn't preserved and handed down. While I may not have joy of having pictures of my great, great grandparents in all instances, I intend to do all I can to insure than in 200 years my descendants will be able to look back and have media of me and my family and hopefully know something more than names and dates about who we were.
I have all my machines on a scheduled daily backup to an external firewire HD that is shared over my wireless router (AirPort). The most critical stuff (pictures, docs, music) gets secondarily copied to my .Mac account over webDAV.
ReplyDeleteWait until Time Machine comes out on Mac OS X (Leopard)...simple backup for the masses...well, those on a Mac. Is there some other option? ; )
Has anyone looked at the new Windows Home Server? That sounds like an ideal solution for "normal" people out there - automatically backs up all the machines on your network, remote access, duplicate copies on separate hard drives (without the hassle of RAID). Combine a Windows Home Server with an on-line backup and I think you'd have it made! Windows Home Server isn't available yet, but will be soon. I've been using the beta for a couple months and can attest to the fact that it really is designed for "normal" users out there, there's nothing about it that requires an IT guy - I'd be perfectly comfortable giving one to my Mother in-law, she'd do just fine.
ReplyDeleteCheck it out - Windows Home Server
(and no, I'm not a M$ employee - I just think it's a really useful product)
For those who have concerns about how long a CD or DVD will last that you burn on your system, there is a big difference in archival media as far as how long it will last as well.
ReplyDeleteI'm using Mam-A (Mitsui) CDs and DVDs for music and even recording off-air some of the Church broadcasts or mp3 files, Mam-A/Mitsuit claims the discs will last 75 years. That's because they use real gold and special dyes in the discs. Given the quality, they are more expensive (for reference, CDs about $1-1.50 each, DVDs about $2-3.50 apiece depending on where you get them) than regular discs (CDs very cheap, DVDs 50-cents-$1.25 each) but could be well worth the extra cost given they could last much longer.
Kodak made similar quality gold discs (there are imitators of both of these products, beware of those who just use the standard aluminum reflective backer made to look gold) but Kodak quit producing theirs several years back.
I'm using a few different backup methods -- external hard drives, DVDs, mozy.com, copies on multiple compters -- but I need something better. In particular, of all the methods I use, only mozy is automated, and I'm not as good about running manual backups as I should be. Mozy, unfortunately, does have the 2 GB limit on free accounts and doesn't have a client (yet?) for FreeBSD, so it only gets a few sets of files from my Powerbook.
ReplyDeleteWhile I was reading this post, though, it occurred to me that I have a couple of family members in different parts of the country who also use FreeBSD, or in a couple of cases Linux, and have reasonably decent internet connections. Maybe we should get together and set up rsync mirroring between our systems :)
I was once told a story that was supposed to have been true. The folks at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) were driving the Voyager spacecraft past the outer planets, and wanted to document this onetime event completely. They recorded the incoming data stream every way they could. They used a line printer, 9 track tape, disk platters, 8 inch floppies, paper tape, using all recording media they could. Scientists could now study the information in multiple ways. But since time marches on, now the only way to reference the data is from the line-printer output. Nobody has 9 track tape player, disk platters, or an 8 inch diskette drive anymore. Sometimes just the good old printout or photograph - carefully stored - can still be a good bet. The permanent record of the Nephites was done by engraving. Does anybody think we’ve invented all the ways to digitally store things yet? I’ll bet we’ll have lots of new ways to loose our data in the future - if we're not careful.
ReplyDeleteI actually would take it one step further from what someone said above and not only do copies of CDs and DVDs every few years, but also have hard copies (on paper) of at least the most important pictures. Servers can fail, hard drives can, too. Technology changes, and the burned CDs and DVDs degrade due to light, air, temperature, and humidity. The only really reliable medium that we know will outlive any of us is still good old fashioned paper! (Oh, now I see that someone just said this...so call this another vote for paper!)
ReplyDeleteThis sounds simplistic, but the way that I backup my photos (and it keeps them nice and organized too) is I keep all of them both my my MySpace and Facebook accounts. Facebook even has a photo printing service so if you want to have them printed for people out of state you can have them done (in various sizes too) and shipped wherever you want to. Also, many of my friends on these services have also copied them to their accounts. But, I've also done the external hard drive thing, now I just need to get it stored away from here in case of the fire scenario.
ReplyDeleteI just read the perfect article in my "Professional Photographer" magazine that discussed many ways to prevent things like this from happening, I will scan the article and send it to you, it was something I had been looking for answers to as well, especially since I am a photographer and the need to protect photos is even more crucial. It listed and discussed a handful of products out there that stores and archives on and off location. I think you will enjoy the article.
ReplyDelete