At 5:54 PM -0800 1/4/2009, aussieshepsrock wrote:
>
>I'm setting up to archive family photo's for posterity

Wonderful project!  Great fun, to be able to ship DVDs to relatives etc.

But please - retain the original photos.

1) They'll always outlast the digital media.

2) As scanner technologies develop, you might want to rescan things 
at a higher resolution and better color qualities later.

Wrt scanning resolution...  Don't short yourself.  It's nice to have 
some low-res versions to email around, or put on web pages.  But for 
high-quality printing, you'll need 'em to be double the resolution of 
your printer.  What's double?  Good question - the printers of 
tomorrow will be very high res!

>but am getting conflicting info on Media Choices and on going 
>between CDR or DVDR.

The difference in longevity between CD and DVD media is nil.

>I'm also not quite sure where to look for scientifically valid 
>evaluations and reccomendations.

Google on terms like "NIST care for disc".  NIST has published a 
number of guides.

IMO, there are NO truly valid evaluations.  They're all done by 
abusing the media in some way then extrapolating.  And the numbers, 
at least in my experience, just don't even come close to reality.

>I am not looking for '100000' year durability, just serious 
>confidence in making it 10-15years before revisiting this data for a 
>'media' or technology roll over.

10 to 15 years is simply too long for burned digital media.  To be 
honest, all the "scientific" data notwithstanding, I think you're 
lucky to get 5.  If you have a professional quality burner, using 
high-quality authoring media... maybe you can do more than 5, maybe. 
And that's before taking into account media format obsolescence. 
\\insert rant about my own and my client's hair-thinning experiences 
of trying to read discs only a few years old\\

To retain data on burned media for up to five years -- I currently 
tell my clients to burn it AT LEAST three times.  The clients that 
are serious about data retention retain printouts, archival photos, 
negatives, burned media, AND hard drives.

>seen multiple references to the inherent dangers magnetic tapes face 
>over the long term.

Mag tapes have NEVER been recommended for archival storage, but for a 
long time they were the only cost effective media available.  In 
fact, even to this day, there are companies that charge the big bucks 
for tape storage.  Sealed, temperature and humidity controlled 
vaults.  Every n days, they spin the tape up and clean it.  And every 
year or so, they move the data to a new tape.  LOL  They're starting 
to offer that service for CDs and DVDs now too.

FWIW,
- Dan.
-- 
- Psychoceramic Emeritus; South Jersey, USA, Earth

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