File saving for the future, PSD or TIFF?

[Buckster]

I said future retrieval, not future compatibility.

In 32 years of owning and using computers, I've gone through a lot of different kinds of media, much of it now long obsolete. Cassette tapes, 8" floppies, 5.25" floppies, 3.5" floppies, zip drives, tape drives, a few different kinds of hard drives, CDs, DVDs, USB thumb drives, various memory cards; SD, micro SD, Sony mem sticks, CF, etc. I've had each of them fail, crash, dump, death-click, etc., at some point or other.

And yet, I still have my very first, very oldest image files that go back some 25 years.

I use a lot of redundant media, multiple redundant hard drives, DVDs, CDs, and transfer to new media as it becomes available. In addition, I'm not just backing up to one additional cloud resource, but a couple of them, plus a remote enterprise server, plus another remote machine I own at a whole different physical location.

I'm feeling pretty confident that I'm going to continue to have access to my digital files until electricity-powered devices suddenly stop working permanently, or until I die, whichever comes first.

 

[usayit]

My response was also related to future retrieval as well.

The cloud isn't some magic media that's unlimited and infallible. Implementing the cloud doesn't magically make these issues go away as already explained in my prev post. The sheer fact that you have to manage you own redundancy in media in addition to cloud is a clear indication that future retrieval is not resolved by solely just a cloud solution. If you were to omit you cloud backup and simply off site the duplicate media, you are essentially performing the same exact task. In fact its better. First its cheaper than cloud backup (but at the expense that its not as quick to access the data). Second, there is an inherent risk of going through a business agreement with anyone... pushing off the responsibility to someone else. Just as companies have gone bankrupt and disappeared with customers lining up for litigation for lost services/products but never seeing any resolution (largest investors always get to the assets first), these clouds could do exactly the same thing. Remember businesses are entities are limitd liability... ultimately their assets. If you loose data retrieval from the cloud through either loss or business failure, good luck.. you are essentially on your own.

A previous company that I work for that actually provides DR services has pages and pages of legal jargon to avoid complete liability. Its essentially onus on the client (not the service) to prove DR and business continuity. This is why the Feds that require this by law inspect the process via our clients are not necessarily focused on our processes.

DVDs and CDs have life spans as well. There are already indication that early copies of DVD-Rs and CD-Rs are failing. I have a burn date on all my media (in addition to other copies) and I plan on refreshing them.

As I mentioned in the past here on the TPF.... the bigger challenge is solving the media and hardware. Software is relatively easier to solve... beginning with documentation/spec.

 

[Kolia]

We don't have to look at the distant past or a hypothetical future to realize to potential issues.

Less than two years ago, LightRoom 4 changed the way the Develop tools work. Any RAW files previously treated with LR3 had to be converted to the latest version to be worked on. In the process, the resulting image was changed slightly.

 

[runnah]

Old people like the old things they grow up with. I will probably be scared of the hologram storage my grand kids use.

Just don't confuse familiarity with superiority.

 

[Buckster]

Maybe ignorance is bliss, but after 32 years of hearing this spiel from the "YOUR DATA'S GONNA DIE!!!" (for all the aforementioned reasons) doomsayers, and still I have my files despite the obvious impossibility of such a thing, I'm just not terribly worried about it. If it all dies and becomes irretrievable and unusable before I kick the bucket, bummer I guess.

Unless every single backup resource fails simultaneously so that there's absolutely no place at all for me to recover from, it all sounds like Chicken Little panic to me.

 

[runnah]

The bigger question is will the images from today even be worth viewing in 10-20 years from now? Even 10 years ago digital images were terrible compared to now.

 

[usayit]

Buckster, Don't get me wrong.. what you are doing to protect your data is the correct process. Its kinda like insurance, you don't know until you need it. I'd say you are the minority.. most people do not back up at all and somehow are surprised when things go wrong. Most of this line of responses were stemming from the comment about cloud being a solution which it is not.

I was on a recover team that recovered and hosted for well over a year a few clients that lost whole infrastructures that were located in the World Trade Center. Believe me. If we had failed to recover and/or our banking clients failed to have a proven strategy, it would be all over the news. The fact that to the wide public doesn't really know about the problems with archiving data is A GOOD thing. There are quite a few isolated cases of dataloss in the industry, this is why federal regulations are in place for financials.

 

[usayit]

The bigger question is will the images from today even be worth viewing in 10-20 years from now? Even 10 years ago digital images were terrible compared to now.

"Worth" needs to be quantified.... and not necessarily defined in terms of quality/content. One of the most valuable photographs in the world is an image that is barely recognizable.

 

[runnah]

The bigger question is will the images from today even be worth viewing in 10-20 years from now? Even 10 years ago digital images were terrible compared to now.

"Worth" needs to be quantified.... and not necessarily defined in terms of quality/content. One of the most valuable photographs in the world is an image that is barely recognizable.

Sentimental and historical significance aside, looking back all of the "art" photos I took with my older digital cameras are of such bad quality I have no use for them.