Will your digital photos survive 10 years?

by Christopher Phin on Feb 14, 2008

Our feature story covers best formats, backup options, and why you should reburn those photo CDs every two years.

When asked what they’d save from their house if it were on fire, most people list photographs in the top three. It’s easy to see why; photos jog memories, trigger tears and prompt a smile in a way few objects can. And for the most part, they’re irreplaceable.

The same goes for digital photographs stored on your PC. Nothing but hard work stands between a crashed hard disk and reconstructed documents and spreadsheets should the worst happen, but you could never recreate those lost digital snaps. Birthdays, weddings and holidays: the full panoply of family life that you’ve carefully captured, all irrevocably gone.

It doesn’t always take something as serious as data loss to rob you of your photos either. In just ten years’ time, technology will have changed beyond recongnition – different cameras, different storage media and different file formats. We need to guarantee that we can still access the thousands of photos we shoot each year.

In this feature, we’ll examine various backup strategies to guard against mechanical failures depriving you of your best memories, explore different ways to recover photos from corrupt memory cards and storage media, and help you make the best choices about how to store your photos to ensure they can still be opened decades from now.

Whether you’re a professional photographer or a keen amateur wanting to safeguard a few digital albums, we’ll arm you with the knowledge required to keep your photos safe. Nobody likes contemplating when and how the worst could happen to your data, but failing to prepare for a major loss is absolutely begging for trouble.

Next page - why you should reburn those photo CDs (click below)...

This article appeared in the October 2007 issue of PC Authority.