Digital BW, The Print

> From: pjb74nz
> 
> You are all on the same track regarding your existing files. But I'm 
> not even certain you will be able to put the disk into a matchbox 
> sized device we now call a PC.
> 
> In the previous discussion everyone talked about the backup method, 
> system or media readability in the future. The possibility of loss 
> due to fire, flood, lost or stolen. Media corrosion due to age etc 
> etc etc.
> 
> BUT what about the fact that in a few years, (yes a few years) that 
> your RAW files will not be able to be converted to DNG. Why because 
> Adobe may be bought by a company that doesn't want to support DNG 
> anymore for whatever reason. Mainly financial. Google looks like the 
> company that would buy Adobe and why would they care about RAW or 
> even TIF, JPG and GIF. They just want to control the ability to share 
> not archive. If they did they may want the rights to your files just 
> so you could look at them. 
> 
> Now what happens if Microsoft and Mac OS is a distant memory and we 
> all are using "Google Quick Start" on a mobile device that is smaller 
> than a CD or DVD and only capable of taking the replacement for what 
> is now known as Flash drives. Or maybe the only input or output 
> device is a Google web device and all they understand is a file 
> without any .xxx extension, which is now a thing of the past, and 
> images are digital signatures and compressed to a single pixel and 
> can be expanded to several thousand billion pixels in a second and be 
> read by pointing the device at fresh air. 
> 
> Does all this sound like science fiction. Maybe but I don't think so  
> because this is how I see things progressing. The PC as we know today 
> is a pig of a beast and is just waiting to be replaced.
> 
> I'd be interested in your comments and before you ask, our cameras 
> would all be wirelessly connected to Googles website as well. Every 
> photo shot will be sent to their comets travelling the world and 
> sucking up information and sharing it with all.

Archiving isn't just a matter of preserving a physical medium. Unlike books
(or paintings, or sculptures, or architecture), the deterioration of digital
media isn't visible unless the data are actually read, something that
doesn't happen when the medium is sitting on a shelf or in a safe. You
therefore need to read all your archived files every few years or so. Since
storage density always increases over time, and one needs more and more of
it anyway, the obvious time to do this is whenever moving to a larger
medium. You also need to keep two current copies of everything, so that if a
medium does fail, and you discover this during the copy, you can still have
another copy to make your two new copies from.

Archiving also isn't just a matter of preserving data, for the reasons you
desribed. When you do the copy, you also need to decide if any of your data
is in an obsolete file format that requires old software to read. If it
does, it would be a good time to use that old software to convert to a newer
format. For instance, at this point, one might convert raw files from old
cameras to DNG, in case support for those old cameras is dropped from later
converters. But in the future, if DNG looks like it's falling out of favor,
one might convert DNG files to something else, before it's too late.

-- 

Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco@...