Comments on: Creating & Keeping Persistent Digital Memories

By: Gabriella

Gabriella — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:29:10 +0000

Wow another great post Rudd with tons of great information. I too have been dealing with this same dilemma. My problems started when I switched from a G4 Mac to the new iMac not only did I loose all applications but older files that could not be read on the new iMac. I have old cd’s that don’t work, old hard drives that cannot be read. CD burners that are useless to me since the application won’t work on my new Computer.

I wonder what do people do with all this information, & stuff? If you cannot recover it do you throw it all away? I mean what use is it to anyone? What I have started doing is saving as much as I can to different servers I have. I don’t trust any attachable device nor do I want to load up on DVD’s that may or may not work in a few years. Plus it takes up so much space regardless of whether they are small or not.

I wonder how long before technology can offer one device where everything we want to save can be saved. The kind of device you can James Bond out of a pair of glasses or maybe one cool gadget I wonder… Will I be alive to see it. ☺

By: Ruud

Ruud — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:02:51 +0000

Ah, real person to person sharing! I thought you meant social sharing (YouTube, Flickr, etc.).

No, that’s indeed a good idea.

By: Yura

Yura — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:52:44 +0000

When it comes to sharing, I think it’d just make sense to come over or have them come over to you, so they would backup your data themselves to an external HDD and carry it with them.

Yes, it isn’t always fresh, but at least they’d have all the recent and digitized photos and they even wouldn’t have to restore your data, unless *their* HDD dies. The responsibility of converting the data would lie on them, too. Then again, if they are young, they might not bother enough until its too late.

So yeah, I guess it doesn’t replace your triple strength backup process, but I assume it might ease the restoration process considerably.

By: Ruud

Ruud — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:49:35 +0000

HDD’s are very likely to become ancient technology too, yes. That’s part of digital media being fleetingly temporary, technology or storage wise.

Instructions for the next generation on backup and use … I think that’s a very good point, something I’ll probably expand on later.

As for sharing; that’s a tiny insurance but not something I would want to rely on. Bandwidth and longevity thumb that option down, I think.

Thank you very much for the comment (and for pointing out a typo!)

By: Yura

Yura — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:06:28 +0000

Unsurprisingly, I recently thought about leaving my digital legacy, too. I didn’t find a better solution, than at least a simple RAID. Just two HDDs might work to account for non-tech savvy people (though I believe, should one want to read my files without me, he’ll find a tech savvy person, right?).

Then again, if in 70 years HDDs and RAID become what the shot-through paper cards are today, is there be a guarantee for that? “RAID, – oh, it’s something our 80 year old pal might have heard of.”

Perhaps, it’d make sense to teach ones offsprings to backup and convert the data themselves, so they know how to get it and to recover it? Instead of hoarding your data yourself right now, share it now and you’ll be relieved of the burden to make instructions and worry that they won’t find your data (at least partly). I see you’ve already started going in that direction, so it’s all good :)

Thanks for writing this up, Ruud. I couldn’t wrap my head around this at the first attempt: probably because I don’t have that much digital data to delegate.

By: Ruud

Ruud — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:24:56 +0000

A good setup might be to create one folder on a 1 TB drive which will contain your data. Not having to search what to backup where is a relief.

I store an increasing amount of files in PersonalBrain. Every once in a while I click File -> Create Brainzip and it makes a zipped copy of itself, including the folder structure. Easy, fast, cool :)

By: Pearl

Pearl — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:26:35 +0000

Hi Ruud – this is such an excellent post.. thank you for writing it. I worry so much about losing my data which is scattered all over the place, specially after I lost quite a bit of documents/pictures/files from yahoo briefcase recently.. what a heartache that was! I’ll be referring to this article time and again for tips, so bookmarked it! (of course bookmarked on more than one place – x-marks as well as on delicious ;))

By: Ruud

Ruud — Tue, 26 May 2009 00:33:51 +0000

What a wonderful way for me to end the day; check in and find your comment. Thanks :)

By: Mich D. aka @MichDdot

Mich D. aka @MichDdot — Mon, 25 May 2009 22:58:16 +0000

Ruud this is brilliant advice. Just read the ‘Google Reader + Twitter HashTags’ post on SEP/Sphinn. Funny it made me go ‘hmmmmmm wish there was an easy way to do everything like that’ and then… Here you are with another great set of possibilities for more data saving.

To quote Fantomaster ‘I bookmarked it’ :) I even making my kids read it, then save it to. From 12.5″ hardfloppy til now I have lost more than I think I ever learned. Awesome ideas man.

Thanks for keepin your writing smart n clean,
Peace,
Mich D.

By: Ruud

Ruud — Sat, 16 May 2009 20:08:13 +0000

I didn’t and don’t include flash/thumb/usb drives because they’re not reliable enough, yet. Flash memory has a limited amount of read/write cycles in them and unlike with hard disks, there’s no warning at all when it will fail.

They’re not cost efficient yet either. A 1 TB drive is about 100 dollar, give or take a few bucks. That’s hard to beat. Hook up a second that you mirror automatically to and you’re set.