Digital memories

How long do you think your photos and videos will be preserved? Printed photos tend to last longer but they gradually degrade in quality if you want to reproduce. DVD and tapes have their own life. This article discusses different media, their life, storage environment and backups strategies. I think it’s good idea to transfer your backup on new media after every few years. New type of media always keeps on emerging. After every few years you see different type of media available in the market. E.g. tape, small HDD, CD, DVD, Memory Chips and now blue laser disks. I think if I backup my digital and digitized photos on hard drive and on 2 sets of DVDs then that would be sufficient. I am also thinking on converting all my digital 8 cassettes to DVD and making two copies of all DVDs. I am still searching for better option to convert digital tape to DVD without loosing quality. Tried few DVD recorders but didn’t get desired quality and features. On other hand converting videos using computer is extreme pain and requires good hardware (based on past experience, have not tried recently). So for now I am keeping my all digital 8 cassettes at cool and dry place. Need to convert them before my camcorder breaks.