All Other Forms of Backup are Temporary

For the past decade, we have generated more personal digital information in the form of digital photos and videos than ever before. With that has come the question of how to protect these important personal files. The U.S. National Archives and many other organizations charged with the incredible responsibility of preserving digital artifacts have been struggling with this problem for years and have yet to come up with an answer.

Here are some of the options and the challenges each presents:

Online storage solutions

Online storage, at its best, means your data is "out there somewhere." It is available to you as long as the service is available for you to do so and at the speed at which you have Internet access. This means you can get your files if the service is available, your subscription is up-to-date and your bandwidth is fast enough to get you the files you need in a reasonable amount of time. You should also have a physical copy of important files within your own control. Online backup is only as permanent as your ability or willingness to continue to pay ongoing service fees.

Solid state devices (e.g. USB thumb drives)

Disposable solid state devices like thumb drives and SD cards have an even shorter lifecycle than DVDs. Solid state devices, including memory cards, have a limited number of read/write cycles which vary by brand. They're convenient, but not permanent.

Hard drives

You're going to lose your data. It's only a matter of time. Spinning platters of magnetic media are notoriously unreliable. The lifespan of hard drives is even shorter than solid state devices.

Optical media (e.g. DVDs)

Don't use Optical media for long-term storage. Even manufacturers of this technology agree that there are too many problems with optical media to make it a viable long-term storage technology.

Print

Paper actually offers better long-terms storage than the technologies listed above. Many of us have pictures of great-grandma that, while faded, are still viewable. The problem with paper is that is not adaptive. You cannot store a video on paper. Paper also takes up tons of space. Paper also has environmental implications.