Archiving family photos for future generations

[syncrasy]

The age old question for the digital age...

I have an archive of scans (TIFFs) of thousands of family photos dating back to the late 1800s (scans of 4x5, 2x2, 35mm and other negatives, 35mm and glass slides, Cabinet Cards, and other prints). All images are (or will be) catalogued in Media Pro (or whichever software I choose to replace it). The archive size will be about 4TB.

I assume that most, if not all, current digital storage media likely will be obsolete 30 years from now. Obviously the next generation will have to "deal with" the obsolescence issue and transfer the files to a different medium later (if they even care about it). Given that, which current technology/medium is "best" for saving and distributing copies of this archive to family members? Given the limited capacity of DVDs and USB flash drives, it seems the only practical and universal solution is a portable hard drive with USB (a technology that presumably will be around for the next 10-15 years). But 30 years?

Any thoughts?

[Peter.Brockhausen]

For distributing copies of 4TB of pictures, buy normal external hard drives. SSDs would be quite expensive, but are an option too. And then, handover the disks and the problem. That's called risk transfer...

Or, you can rent with your family and friends together online storage space. Then, the problem - readability of data in 30 years, backups, ... - is outsourced to amazon or whatever service you choose.

Professional solutions, which are used by companies, are by far too expensive.



--peter

[syncrasy]

Thanks, Peter. More or less confirms my thinking. I'll likely invest in a few external drives. Perhaps there will be advances in optical storage (e.g. ultra-super-duper Blu-ray) in the next 10-15 years. If so, perhaps the capacities could get more practical for my needs.

[roberte]

Archival prints are the only sure bet. Also worth investing in Peter Krogh's guide on digitising your family archive: http://thedambook.com/dyp/