Will your digital picture files last? :: 2 Computer Scientists Tell All

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When I first read the article that we are linking to below, I thought to myself, “Wow, I knew that things could go wrong with digital files, but I didn’t know they could go THAT wrong in THAT many ways!”

Think about it and revert back with me to just 10 years ago. Do you remember the files that you saved from back then? Where are they now? Do you still have them? If so, can you still access them?

The concerns that Ethan Miller, Symantec presidential chair in storage security at UC Santa Cruz and Ahmed Amer, an associate professor of computer engineering at Santa Clara University stress in this article are important ones to consider.

My two biggest takeaways that I felt were important enough to point out are the following:

“A hard drive is a physical device. Things like the lubricant and bearings will degrade over time.” – Ethan Miller

I knew that anything stored on a hard drive couldn’t last for that long due to things like magnets altering the information or just because things die over time, but it never occurred to me that a hard drive is not just a magical thing floating out there in the computer. It is a physical object that is susceptible to decay just like everything else on earth. Don’t even get me started on how they talked on how just heat from coffee can affect your computer. It’s crazy!

“A lot of people, when they think of data storage, they think, ‘Will it survive?’ That’s really just a small part of it.” – Ahmed Amer

He goes on to bring up past technologies, like the Laser Disc of 20 years ago. He poses a good question with this. He asks how you would even be able to get information off of a Laser Disk if you had one? You can only find a Laser Disk player on eBay nowadays. This brought up something else that I never thought about. Technology is progressing so fast, how do you know that you will even be able to access the images you are currently storing on the devices you currently have in say the next 10, 20, or 30 years? There’s no way to know. Even ten years ago I had a floppy disc drive on every computer I owned…I’m currently typing on a Mac that doesn’t even have one! How long until CDs, DVDs, flash drives, etc. are obsolete?

In the end, both came to the conclusion that Miller voiced, when he spoke on how it may sound weird with him being “a computer scientist to say this, but if they’re photos you really, really want your grandchildren to see, print them out.”

For a free consultation on how we can help you preserve your most cherished memories, contact us here now

To read more on the article I referenced here in this posted, titled “Why your digital pictures might die before your grandkids see them” by Keith Wagstaff (NBC News).

Thanks for stopping by and we look forward to capturing your memories for you!

Cheers!

– J. Kincannon

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Orange County Family Photographer, Kincannon Photography is a professional photographer in Orange County, California capturing newborn, seniors, dog, children and family portraits.

Kincannon Photography is based in Yorba Linda, and serves all surrounding areas including Newport Beach, Irvine, Corona Del Mar, Brea, San Juan Capistrano, Aliso Viejo, Anaheim Hills, Mission Viejo, Costa Mesa, Fullerton, Villa Park, Laguna Beach, Newport Coast, and other surrounding Orange County metro areas.