Digital Amnesia

Good question...meadia becomes obsolete with monotonous regularity....err, I think Mrs Cat's filed it somewhere as a hardcopy.
Most of the good stuff is in my furry brain....filed somewhere between mousies and bows
Del

Really important backups usually require at least two copies. One you keep somewhere handy while the other is kept in a vault or safe. One reason why is because CDs that are exposed to the environment (or so the reasoning goes) will gradually lose their data. So, keeping them in a dark, dry place will ensure that they keep their integrity longer.

Next practice is to create new copies every couple of years or so. Even with a dark, dry safe, CDs deteriorate so creating a new copy will ensure that you extend your data's life. One other advantage of making new copies is that since software advances constantly, you may need to save your data under a new format. Also, if the CD goes the way of the dinosour, you will have to save your data under the new medium.

Regarding passwords, if the CD is in a vault, writing the password on the disk will help jog your memory. As long as you're the only one with access to the vault, writing down the password should be okay.

regards,

Vulcan

For IT professionals it's very usual to make at least two backup copies and "refresh" them time by time. For example, in Hungary there is a very strict legal regulation how to store and save financial and personal data. But when you give a digital camera to your mum do you tell her that she have to make two backups and periodically refresh them otherwise her photos can be lost? And will she do so?

A couple of years ago when I was abroad the SIMcard of my cell phone went wrong. Though I could buy and other - local - one I lost all of my stored numbers.

I use a Palm PDA with PasswordPlus for storing my numberless UserIDs and PWs. I synchronize it both with my laptop and my desktop PC so I always have at least three copies but after synchronisation I always do an additional printout.

GA from me.

Tape on a professional machine, properly stored, is guaranteed for 30 years. I still recommend two things though, 1) Keep at least two copies and two drives.....plus interface card and PC!! And think max 10 years before putting on a new media.....

Remember NASA has tapes of the first moon landings and have trouble finding the hardware to read them today.....

And how about you family photos, SIM cards, not officially used other gadgets with memory? I'm afraid you misunderstand my problem. I'm not talking about the data of professional data centers, I'm talking about the data of everyday, inexperienced, unconscious users. They rely on new technology and it cheats them.

If you have and old LP disk but don't have a player you can easily build one. But if you have a laser disk and you don't have a player, what can you do?

Once if you missed to make copies to the newer media you will loose your data, you cannot step back and find or build the proper device to retrieve them. Your example about NASA says the same.

You will find this very interesting:

The average person can acquire a domain very inexpensively to use it for personal storage and have a personal or family web site to boot. The down side being no web access is problematic.

options

Take a picture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_drive

I do have my own domain (more exactly we have a family domain because all four of us work in the computer line and everybody has his/her own subdomain) but using a virtual drive means an other dependency from the technology. An average person not necessarily has SIM reader, not necessarily have broadband internet connection in order to use the virtual drive like a local one and maybe does not want to share his/her data with the service provider.

A virtual drive needn't be utilized online but within your computer or on an external HD if you prefer. It is in essence a picture of your data and the process is programing within windows.

Only one question:bypassing the legal issues, would you copy the collection of your UserIDs, passwords or any important personal data to a remote virtual drive? You may say you can encode it. But where will you store the decoding information?

Chisel one copy into a stone tablet smear tablet with bears grease or beeswax and insert into cement pour of my new sidewalk and record the triangulated coordinates in a tattoo on my youngest sons earlobe.

Bury a second copy in the east side of kilimanjaro and pay a local family to guard it for three life times.

Put a third copy on my flash drive and never use for anything else and enclose in a key pouch inside a blanket great grandma left in the attic.

Give an ISO image of the fourth copy to my ID Guard service for safe keeping.

You betcha - google public key encryption or PGP

PGP is OK, if you can store or memorize the passphrase. PKI solutions also can be good if you take the key dongle. But both case you have to have access to the remote storage and neither of them give answer to the original problem: formats, media can become obsolete and if you had not prepared (5 - 10 - 15 years ago) you will lose your data.

This was your original question:

How can you save your important data? What is the proper medium for long-term storing of data? Does digitalization means data loss?

I gave you an answer based on what you asked. Now, however, you're saying that you have a different problem. You seem to be asking:

• You want a cellphone/digital camera/PDA that either backs up your data for you or at least reminds you to do that. That would be nice but no one seems to be developing such products.
• You have data in an old format that you want to retrieve but the technology to convert it to the new formats is either not existing or no longer existing. However, I know that there are products that do that. There are LP players with USB connections that allow you to digitize the music from the LP. On the other hand, there are CD versions of LPs available on the market. Why go through the hassle of digitizing them yourself?

I think educating people that backing up their data is the wise thing to do. If you have enough clout to convince manufacturers to develop products that do that automatically or, at least, reminds them to do it, that would be nice. Go for it.

regards,

Vulcan

An M-Audio Micro Track II will do that for audio but I think a DVR is what will provide for the need.

I think - according to the previous sentences - my original question was more general. Is it necessary that changing standards, changing encoding algorithms, changing devices result data "loss"?

First there was the writing. If you didn't want to forget something, you put it down. Written text could remain for centuries. How about the digital "remainders"?

I think Del the cat has understood me.

Actually the problem of retaining and having access to your data is the same whether you are a large company, or a Granny with her laptop and photos.....there is no difference......only the private person can accept a lower data rate (cheaper hardware)......thats all.....

I burn all my photos onto a DVD or two, 6 weeks and I burn another one.....or two!

My video CAM has 30GB and until its full, I leave the videos/pictures on it as well.....

A new bigger card for my Camera is not expensive either.....4 GB and I can take pictures with that for 2 years or more.....

A new bigger card for my Camera is not expensive either.....4 GB and I can take pictures with that for 2 years or more.....

And if your card fails before you copied it out you will lose the pictures of the last 2 years...

You sort of missed the point completely......if you think I (or my family) want to wait two years before looking at the pictures, you did not think your post through well.....

There are probably people who do just that, but not me!

I copy the pictures to my PC and burn them onto CDs as slide shows and backup in full quality onto DVDs.......as probably most folks do nowadays with digital cameras....or have them printed......

But also leaving the pictures/videos on the camera till I need the space, is another "extra" form of insurance/backup....just in case.....!

Online storage

Chisel into stone or as edignan indicated tuck it away in a server

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Acronis_True_Image_Home_2009_d2236.html

http://www.tandbergdata.com/us/es/support/documentation/summaries/secure-data-backup/

http://www.dataprotection.com/

CR4 Admin: removed broken link

There are free programs designed for IT people that can crack passwords very quickly. Google it.

Hopefully nobody uses them for bad purposes though.

Steve

There are lots of those programs, especially on Russian sites, but the problem is a bit wider then recovering a lost password.

I agree.

DVD format may seem safe now but I just read some articles on 3D Hologram data writing that will alow about a Terabit of data to be written and read on regular DVD media. Next year I think is when it will be marketed.

Considering that I would say online storage would be the safest way.

Steve