Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, scott lanes 
<scott@l...> wrote:
> At 03:12 PM 4/17/2003 +0200, you wrote:
> >I'm going for eternity - everything
> >less is unacceptable..:-)
> 
> 
> You better get back to film then ;-) , all current digital media 
(including 
> CDR) begins degrading as soon as it is produced. They have made 
great 
> strides in recent years, but current technologies will only keep 
your data 
> safe for a couple decades (which is fine for most work anyway).

It's not just the technology; it's also the standards.  Even
if CD-R's themselves are good for 50 years, it's unlikely
you'll be able to find a PC that can read them in another
10 or 15 years.

Historically, PC storage standards overlap for about one 
technological generation.  5.25" floppies and 8" floppies
coexisted for a few years.  Then 3.5" floppies came out
and 8" floppies went away.   When CD-R's came out they
coexisted with 3.5" floppies but 5.25" floppies were gone.
Now many PC makers are discontinuing 3.5" floppies and 
just using CD-R's, and writable DVD's are starting to 
appear.  Current DVD drives can read CD-R's but whatever
replaces DVD in a few years probably won't.  Etc.
Furthermore file and image format standards also change.

The ONLY archiving strategy for digital is constant
vigilance - you have to carefully watch technological
trends and make sure to copy/convert your archive to
whatever the Next Big Thing is before it's too late.
If you get sick or die or lose interest you need to
be sure that whoever inherits your files has the skill
and interest to keep maintaining this.

I have Kodachrome slides from the 1940's that have been
shuffled from one family member to another in a shoebox.
They still look good today.   If these had been digital
files the various successions of uncles, aunts, brothers,
etc, would never have had the skills or awareness to 
do file and data conversions over the decades so these
images would have been lost.