Well it happened: we ALMOST lost ALL our photos from before Hunter was born … in other words the first 2 years of Kylie’s life. Close to 3GB of digital memories. It turns out that several years ago when I built a new computer I didn’t have enough disk space, so I archived the first 2 years off onto CD (didn’t have a DVD burner at the time). My wife noticed that we didn’t have those photos anymore … I panicked … I searched every CD I had ever burnt. I even had to ask my mum (who I think is the only subscriber to this blog) if she still had copies. Anyway, thankfully Sharine had kept the CDs in a “safe place” and we found them. But this bring up an interesting point about archiving in the digital age. Here I am a tech consultant with more tech skills than the average bear and yet here I go almost kissing goodbye to things like Kylie’s first steps, and solid food …
So now I am rethinking my digital archiving strategy. We have > 35GB of photos of Hunter and Kylie already, I replicate the photos across two different life cycle disks (one old 160GB and one new 250GB disk). I think the chance of losing both is low. But I think I’ll have to buy an external hard disk for storage given that CD’s and DVDs have a lifespan of only a 4-10 years. The question is how big? How safe? Should I use an online service? What does the world think?
Filed under: digital archiving, family photos, happenings, kids, techno-junk
