That's great until you find that the thirty years of slides and negatives, along with the prints that you have in cardboard archive boxes under the bed have all been destroyed when your ground floor flat was flooded. Everything gone. That was my situation, lots of other ways to loose analogue images too though, fire being the other very likely possibility that will get everything in one go. At least with digital it is quite possible to keep multiple first generation copies that do not take up large quantities of physical space. Multiple redundancy is the only way to be sure.
Alan
Sorry to hear that but that is akin to using your next door neighbor to backup your photos using his wifi - with permission to his hard drive. Then he dies or goes to jail and no one else knew he had this agreement with him. SOL.
Agsin, was poor planning on your part having valuables in a places that were in danger if ttge area flooded.
Well mostly as I was living in a single room bedsit (after separating from my ex) about 20'×10' I didn't really have much in the way of storage options for all of those rather bulky slides, negatives and prints. Keeping them off the floor might have helped when I got flooded, not so good if the building had burned down though. The other big problem with storing analogue media is that it is impossible to create first generation copies of analogue images. With analogue ANY backup copy you create will actually be a second generation copy at best. Unfortunately there is no way to ensure that a single original negative or transparency can be permanently stored that is 100% disaster proof. Of course I can make second or later generation copies as backup, but of course they come with a loss of quality, and are still pretty bulky to store, and bulk still makes for expense when storing anything.
With the current price of digital data storage it is actually very easy to maintain multiple first generation copies of both the original RAW file and final edited images. OK so the technology changes both in regard to software and hardware. hardware is easy, as it is quite simple to move the copies of the data to new devices as they are introduced. Because we are dealing with digital data there is no loss of information in these transfers, so we are still dealing with first generation copies. In the case of software changing I admit that there is a slight possibility that old file formats will become obsolete. I cannot recall any image file format that has ever been in general use that is in that situation. Even if a format were to be completely dropped, as long as the file format was fully documented it is not difficult to have some software for the then current systems written that will be able to open and display any type of old file. So the oft quoted disappearance of software support is also a real red herring in ongoing use of digital images. Keep multiple copies, in multiple locations, and the chances are you will never have anything to worry about. Environmental conditions for the storage of digital data now is also much wider than those conditions you need for storing analogue images too.
Alan
I only lost a year's worth of photos as I was lucky enough to have a separate older backup on a pocket drive. So I have to agree with others who insist on at least three backup methods. yes it does cost $$ but electronics aren't always 100%
