This is an ongoing area of discussion in the computer industry that still doesn't have a perfect solution. Even a CD has a shelf life. I think their not expected to last more that five or ten years. As pointed out, you can't count on a particular media to be available for many years. I no longer buy computers with floppy drives. If I had something important on a floppy it would soon be lost to me. For those with large libraries of must-not-lose images you should keep multiple hard drives with your content. Along with an empty drive that you will rotate through. On some schedule (Perpahs every six months) re-format the empty drive and copy one of your hard drives to it. Now the source drive is the empty drive in six months. By copying the entire disk you will find any failure in your hard drives. Since you have multiple copies of this drive you can easilly recover by going to the backup copy. Also, since you're doing the copy every six months you should still be able to read the old drive when it comes time to copy your files to a new type of media. File formats can also change. You have software to read your RAW file now. But, will there be an application to read it when you start using "whatever" version of Windows ten years from now? This is a harder problem. File formats can get orphaned, leaving you with no way to use the files you have so carfully backed up. If you're using a well known brand (Canon, Nikon,...) you will probably be able to find an open source application even if the manufacurer abandons you. So I would not worry about this. Tim Corio On Mon, 2007-04-02 at 05:56 -0400, MichaelHughes7A@xxxxxxx wrote: > In a message dated 02/04/2007 03:36:02 GMT Standard Time, > pwdloge@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes: > A few months ago I pulled a negative from my file that was > made more than sixty years ago and made a print in my wet > darkroom. The negative was in prime condition and had > weathered many years of storage. > > You have a very good point. > > In similar vein I recall several years ago taking an exposed roll of > film from an Agfa box camera. It had been in the camera for 15 years. > It developed and printed OK. > About 4 years ago I bought an expensive (for me) digital camera nearly > $1000 refurbished and now find that Smartmedia cards are not readily > available. > > Progress? > > Michael
