Lost images

[brewmaster15]

I spent the past day going through some images I took on on a recent camping trip . For me , "some images" generally means thousands and this was no exception. I took many many images and of course then I needed to transfer them to storage and next will be the editing and eventually I will post a bunch on my flickr page and post a few here. Then what?

In the olden days which were really not that long ago, we used film and slides as the primary method, printed copies were the secondary method. Both of these, if stored properly really can last decades into centuries. Everyone printed their images on paper and though many found their way to shoe boxes under beds or in attics, many were lovingly placed in albums. Along came digital and the film and slide era faded, now we had digital images on cameras, phones, and computers. Printed images were still made but over time the use of the printed images faded..far easier and cheaper to post images, or text and share images online. Photography which was the art of capturing an image and saving it, became something more akin to sharing a moment and forgetting it, after all if you ever did want to print and save that image, you have the Digital file right?

Digital files make things so much easier. Images can be viewed on the capture device ( phone,camera, tablet etc), and instantly sent to friends and family or posted. And these images can be stored indefinitely right? WRONG!! Digital images don't last forever it turns out. The image itself is just data and 0 and 1's technically but the media they are stored on does degrade. For instance,conventional hard drives average about 5 years, SSD drives though having no moving parts probably average about 10 years, providing both these drive types are good quality. What about flash drives, sd cards etc? probably also about 5 years or less. Data should not be stored on flash drives for archival purposes. Photo hosting sites were a great option for a while but not a guarantee, turns out they can go belly up( I had it happen when digital first came out) or their unlimited free accounts that you stored all your photos on suddenly costed money to use and keep your pics (flickr)

No worries, you can use cloud storage, There is a huge push for that, to the point that phone makers no longer put micro Sd card slots on newer phones, they say its safer and easier to use ( and often pay for) their storage. Cloud storage is the golden grail for photo storage, just sync to the service and upload to that service seemlessly, and of course pay for it. Congratulations, you are hooked and though your images may be safe are they really? According to most of what I have read. cloud storage is pretty safe.
For Example see this link... https://www.tomsguide.com/features/i...-and-heres-why. I really am not trusting of technology, as unfortunately where ever there is technology, someone will find a way to hack it. I really don't like the idea that there is a connection to my devices with some other businesses cloud servers. The potential is there for a hacker to use that connection. If banks and credit card companies can't keep your data safe, a cloud server will? Heres a case illustrating a potential problem with cloud servers...https://arstechnica.com/security/202...-bmc-firmware/

There is one aspect that I like about cloud servers, Redundancy, These servers supposedly back up multiple copies of data at multiple locations. This is key to data preservation as it safeguards against lost data. If one server site is destroyed, the others have the data. Redundancy with Digital images is also very important. If you really want to save that image of your child's birth, or graduation or that once in life trip. you need to redundantly back it up. Print it, Store it not just on your phone or computer., store it on a portable drive or two and check those drives yearly for corruption. DO NOT STORE IT ON SD CARDS. If you are blessed with an older computer with a CDR or DVDR drive, burn a copy to it. Online storage and hosting sites can be part of the redundancy plan. I am particularly fond of and use Flickr https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/flickr-review . But I do not trust Flickr as a sole method as they are vague on sharing tech details.

There is one other problem with digital images. They also tend to get lost. .. think about how many images you took the last 5 years..can you easily find one particular image taken 3 years ago..For most, not likely. You really want to come up with a file system that labels images so you can actually find them.

Thats a whole lot of musings for a early morning but thought I would share them. I would have posted this in the photo section but I wanted to put in in my blog because I think this is also an issue within our hobby. Hand in Hand with the Digital image revolution came social media. Social media was to a large degree driven by images and still is. The problem is the data storage policies of each of the social media sites vary greatly, so photos posted may be fleeting when posted there, or they may unsearchable if the site requires log in. I think for us in the hobby it can take away from actually documenting strains and information for the long term. I can't help but feel that by using digital images for all their wonders and joys as we do that we may be short changing future generations. Of course there is the flip side that the ease and use of digital images now is beneficial enough to negate the negative aspects. Its also possible that we have gotten to the point where we are so focused on the present , that the past matters less than it did.

What do you think? and what do you do with your images?

al

[jeep]

I took a trip to Cozumel several years ago and all my photo's were stored on DVD, which was the "best" way back then. 5 years later the disk was corrupted and my photo's are lost...

But, I did sometimes back things up from my computer to either disk, then either to portable HD or back to PC and I do notice some slight confusion from time to time...

I'm pretty sure I named these after fish and not a Postcard from Oregon, which was actually a scanned copy of a postcard my great grandmother sent to my grandmother during a trip back in 1919, lol...

oregon PC.jpg

[brewmaster15]

Thats funny!

Losing the pics on dvd was not.. its not common to lose images on Dvd but it can happen if the storage isnt optimal or if there was something wrong with either the blank disk at recording or the dvd recorder at the time of burning. I have image disks that.go back a long time.

20230808_115625.jpg

20230808_115539.jpg

I do know that that the burner software I used would run a check after burning and sometimes some disks failed.. same burner.. same data.. same spindle of disks. I suspect it was a quality control issue.

[Sandip]

Back up everything in to the servers of a reputed cloud service provider. They have n-layers of redundancy built in to their infrastructure. Avoid the cheap ones.
As a part time photographer, I use cloud based commercial data storage providers to keep back up of all my data. DVDs, CDs, HDDs, SSDs...all physical media is bound to get lost or corrupted at some point. Please start moving away from them to cloud.
If you are reluctant to give your data to a third party, then use a good quality NAS drive in your home with at least two layers of redundancy to store your data.

[jeep]

If you are reluctant to give your data to a third party, then use a good quality NAS drive in your home with at least two layers of redundancy to store your data.

I have no idea what this means but I'd be interested in learning more and I'll look into it. I don't trust 3rd party anybody with anything...

[jeep]

Al, I used a well known brand and my cd's and dvd's had an actual separation in the layers under the plastic and became unreadable. Too bad because I had a lot of stuff on those... My recipe for Granny Smith Apple Bread is very much missed!!

[brewmaster15]

Al, I used a well known brand and my cd's and dvd's had an actual separation in the layers under the plastic and became unreadable. Too bad because I had a lot of stuff on those... My recipe for Granny Smith Apple Bread is very much missed!!

Brian, that is definitely not normal. I probably have a few hundred disks here for images,linux distros,mp3/flac files/ and anime dvd that have been fine for years and years. No idea what caused your disk separation. However I do fully understand how missed your Granny smith apple bread is! Few things are worse than lost recipes@
Al

[brewmaster15]

NAS
https://www.techtarget.com/searchsto...tached-storage

NETWORK ATTACHED STORAGE.


Picture a mini server where several hd drives are housed together and connected to your pc.. one drive fails the others have your data..

[Sandip]

I have no idea what this means but I'd be interested in learning more and I'll look into it. I don't trust 3rd party anybody with anything...

Brian, A NAS system is a storage device connected to a network(in this case your home network) that allows storage and retrieval of data from a centralized location (the NAS server - a small storage heavy computer tucked away in a safe corner of your home). The benefit of having data in a NAS drive compared to a single hard drive is that NAS is built with redundancy in mind. Data is stored across multiple locations inside this device. This ensures, even if some of the hard drives inside your NAS, you don't loose anything or everything.
Here are a few youtube videos that will explain it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnxW2qxCiO0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imH01FvTssc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpxBmxj5mP0

I used to do some photography work commercially as a side hustle some time back. Birthday parties, senior photography, maternity shoots etc kind of work. My work generated tons of data that I had to store safely. Hence all this.
For regular users, I suggest storing data in commercial cloud. You can encrypt your data, if you are worried about security.

Brian, On a different note, there is absolutely NOTHING that the major players don't already know about you. They most likely know you better than you know yourself. If you have a modern phone, they already know everything there is to know about you. They can predict with fair bit of accuracy, what you will do, what you will eat, even what you will think in future. Scary, but nothing much we can do about it.

[jeep]

Thanks Sandip! Even though I won't probably use this type of system, I do enjoy learning about these things.

And yes, I know they already know about me. I still don't like it. Even if they do spy on me, they'll find I'm really not worthy of their efforts, lol...