On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 8:46 AM, Peter Kurilecz <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> In The Digital Age, The Family Photo Album Fades Away : All Tech Considered
>
> The problem then with the virtual piles of photographs isn't really a sign
> of our failings as scrapbookers but rather, lamentably, as personal
> archivists. Counting on your kids to be able to scroll through your
> Facebook photo albums or your Tumblr? Think again. It's likely that if the
> photo sharing site you use goes under, your collections won't endure
> either.
>
> "We're so new into this technology, and yet it's so widely adopted that
> we're just in this very unusual state where we've got all this kind of
> fabulous documentation, it's very fragile, it's very important, and we
> haven't yet figured out a kind of simple, easy way to make it endure," says
> archivist Bill LeFurgy. "It's a major problem."
>
> Source:
>
> http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/07/25/205425676/preserving-family-photos-in-digital-age
>
> --
> Peter Kurilecz CRM CA
>

This story touches on an issue many of us have discussed periodically- the
use of and/or reliance on Internet provided services to manage content on
our behalf.

Many of us use services such as Flickr, or other photostream sharing
applications to store content and share it with others- but what happens
when they get bought up by another, change terms of service, become
inaccessible (due to insolvency, technical difficulties or a legal issue)
or worst of all, simply cease to exist without notification.

I know some of us painstakingly store and backup our photo libraries on
multiple redundant storage devices, but many people do not... and it seems
the younger the user, the less likely they are to do something of this
sort.  Some people have a relatively high 'risk tolerance', maybe because
they've never suffered a media or hardware crash, or a loss of content
entrusted to others... maybe because they don't know that it DOES HAPPEN
routinely.

As mentioned in the article posted by David Gaynon and commented to by Hugh
Smith, digital storage economics are one issue... but irrespective of the
current or projected future cost, how to you measure the impact of total
loss of access to your family photographs, your music library, data files,
scanned images of vital records or anything else you've stored in some
organization's cloud service product?  Close examination of many of the
SLAs and TOSs clearly state they bear NO LIABILITY for the loss of your
data, even though they sell their 'services' based on up-time records and
the fact that they offer redundant replicated storage... in some country,
somewhere.  Bottom line is if it's corrupted or inaccessible for whatever
length of time, you're simply out of luck, along with being out of the
money you spent for however long they had it.

With the large volume of storage on smartphones these days, and not all of
them having backup capability for local computers, your only option is to
purchase cloud services from some aligned provider. It is advisable to look
into what and how you can connect to this content and if it can be
downloaded to local storage- at least for any of it that you want SOME
CONTROL over.  Naturally, in the event of a hardware failure or loss of a
device when you're on travel, having your content "in the cloud" and
remotely accessible to restore your content is a good thing, but that isn't
enough to ensure your data is protected for as long as you want/need it.

Also, with many laptops (and tablets) now having smaller hard drives and/or
RAM drives and flash memory to minimize power consumption and lengthen
battery life (not to mention reduce weight), the only option afforded to
users is some form of cloud storage for what they want to store that
exceeds the capacity of their laptops.  There are lots of reasons to
utilize these services, such as the ability to share content between
devices and in some cases, even with other users, but again you need to
weigh the risks and determine... is this providing sufficient protection
for my data?

I'm one of those people who has photos on a hard drive on my laptop, a
replicated set on a desktop computer (yes, I still have a Mac Mini), and a
third set on a removable USB hard drive that is stored away form my home.
I have a limited number of images on a FLICKR account, but these are simply
copies of what I have stored that are there for sharing.  I've seen people
lose cameras, have SD cards corrupted or have hard drives crash and lose
their photos and I'm not willing to chance that.

That said, my MacBookPro was purchased in 2002, it has served me well...
but in the recent past, it's developed a couple of major problems and while
nothing on my drive is damaged or lost, I can't gain access to the content
presently. 12 years is a pretty darn long life for a laptop that's seen a
lot of miles and use and plans are in progress for a replacement.  However,
I am unable to backup my iPhone to this device, and I don't want to setup a
fracture dataset by beginning to use the desktop for this purpose... so now
I'm facing a "data at risk" situation.  Until I replace this laptop and can
backup my iPhone, any content on it is a 'one-off' and I have no backup...
phone gets lost, dumped in the toilet, has a critical melt down, and
anything on it since the last backup is lost.

So now I'm faced with deciding, do I want to spend the money for a one year
contract to trust my 'stuff'  to the iCloud.... or do I live with the
risk.  If any of you have experience with the iCloud as your primary form
of backup, good OR bad and would be willing to share (here or offline) I'd
appreciate hearing from you.

Larry
[log in to unmask]
-- 
*Lawrence J. Medina
Danville, CA
RIM Professional since 1972*

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