Best method to archive photos???

Another example of the advantage of low-tech / low-maintenance technology: recently I transferred a whole bunch of 40 years old 8mm home films made by my father - quality wasn't great (mostly because the original quality wasn't professional to start with), but otherwise it worked out pretty well, and now we have priceless family videos in our archive. (It is digitized and backed up - but who knows, may be in 30 years it will be easier to re-scan the original 8mm films than to recover my digital archives ).

Wilt wrote in post #14108252
I will agree, that with equal motivation, our heirs are more likely to page thru digital files than leaf thru boxes, simply due to relative ease of using electronic viewers than leaf thru stacks of photos in boxes -- after all, the each generation goes after ease over quality (witness MP-3 vs. CD, cell phone cameras vs. even P&S, ease of distributing digital cinema in spite of its poor resolution of under 4 pixels per inch on the theater screen). But it is inherently easier to open a box to discover the contents are full of photos, than to find a collection of old harddrives and figure out how to plug them in to make them work...even a grade school dropout can open a box and leaf thru photos. Heck, I have old floppies that can be read in USB floppy drives, but I don't bother to plug them in and see what files are on them, beyond reading the handwritten paper label...I'm admittedly too lazy and too busy to take the time!

I said before:

There is a simple solution, if you are archiving to CD/DVD-R's. Then archive a CD/DVD drive with it in case in the future they stop producing them,

Photographer_Canadian wrote in post #14303586
There is a simple solution, if you are archiving to CD/DVD-R's. Then archive a CD/DVD drive with it in case in the future they stop producing them,

You have to hope that future PCs even have a compatible connection for the old CD/DVD player. Even the ubiquitous USB port is likely to one day disappear with advancements in connection port technology.

Wilt wrote in post #14303602
You have to hope that future PCs even have a compatible connection for the old CD/DVD player. Even the ubiquitous USB port is likely to one day disappear with advancements in connection port technology.

Agreed. Nothing last forever. Technology changes fast and I wouldn't be surprised if there is a new standard interface introduced sometime during this decade.

Wilt wrote in post #14303602
You have to hope that future PCs even have a compatible connection for the old CD/DVD player. Even the ubiquitous USB port is likely to one day disappear with advancements in connection port technology.

lsquare wrote in post #14303976
Agreed. Nothing last forever. Technology changes fast and I wouldn't be surprised if there is a new standard interface introduced sometime during this decade.

Without a doubt, however with the introduction and industry wide acceptance (except from Apple of course who still wont give its owners Blu-Ray) USB 3.0 will probably take us to the end of the decade.

ben_r_ wrote in post #14304120
Without a doubt, however with the introduction and industry wide acceptance (except from Apple of course who still wont give its owners Blu-Ray) USB 3.0 will probably take us to the end of the decade.

The primary principal is NOT the longevity of any specific standard, but the concept of inevitability that all standards come to an end, and then the devices which were supported by that standard might become useless pieces of hardware, relative our reading data recorded to be readable by said devices.

Wilt wrote in post #14304143
The primary principal is NOT the longevity of any specific standard, but the concept of inevitability that all standards come to an end, and then the devices which were supported by that standard might become useless pieces of hardware, relative our reading data recorded to be readable by said devices.

Yes, the point being that there is no such thing as "file it and forget it." Data from now on will have to be constantly migrated to newer media and converted to newer formats.