Another argument for film photography - longevity vs digital archiving.

sybersitizen said:

Overrank said:

sybersitizen said:

Strobist said:

Tony Northrup just posted a video about that he just found out that he has lost many old personal photographs without knowing about it, and despite doing backups of backups.

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I'm going to point out that the actual reason for his loss is not being addressed in this discussion. It wasn't addressed in his own video, either.

The reason for the loss was undiscovered corruption of data in his older stored files, and because he was not aware of the corruption, those damaged files were eventually replicated across all of his backups before he discovered the problem. Then it was too late.

That particular issue requires a special solution, not more backups, or different types of backups. It would be best addressed by having a method of periodically - and automatically - checking all those stored files to identify any corrupted ones so they can be restored from good backups while the backups are still good.

There should be a reasonable way to run such a process on a regular basis. Is there?

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You just create a hash (a short representation of the data as a number - see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5 ) of the image when you store it and add it to a database. Periodically you recalculate the hash of every image and check them against the database. This will tell you (with a reasonable degree of accuracy) if any files have changed. I do this (for a different reason) on my home NAS, it’s pretty standard stuff.

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I know about hashes. What I don't know about are the specific (Windows) tools for regular folks to use for automating their creation and running such periodic checks. What are those?

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sybersitizen said:

sybersitizen said:

Which sort of leads me on to another point that gets lost in these discussions, which is that you can only reasonably compare if you’re doing best in class for all storage mechanisms. So you can only reasonably compare museum quality storage in temperature controlled facilities vs rotated backups with off site storage and data integrity checking. At which point it’s down to which format will you be able to read in the future: film - yes, digital - probably if you choose the right format.

(*) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup_rotation_scheme

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My main use would be to run these periodic checks on the primary repository for files, my NAS, and maybe some folders on the computer's internal drives. I'd run it on the external backup drives only occasionally. Those normally stay disconnected from everything until they need to be either written or read.

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Strobist said:

Tony Northrup just posted a video about that he just found out that he has lost many old personal photographs without knowing about it, and despite doing backups of backups.

It seems that digital are not a perfected backup solution yet, and that film can be a safer long time archive format, if stored and protected well.

So even if some people scoffs about the use of film in 2022, it might not be such a bad idea for important personal moments, that you want to be sure that last for a long time.

BR Strobist

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sybersitizen said:

Strobist said:

Tony Northrup just posted a video about that he just found out that he has lost many old personal photographs without knowing about it, and despite doing backups of backups.

Click to expand...

I'm going to point out that the actual reason for his loss is not being addressed in this discussion. It wasn't addressed in his own video, either.

The reason for the loss was undiscovered corruption of data in his older stored files, and because he was not aware of the corruption, those damaged files were eventually replicated across all of his backups before he discovered the problem. Then it was too late.

That particular issue requires a special solution, not more backups, or different types of backups. It would be best addressed by having a method of periodically - and automatically - checking all those stored files to identify any corrupted ones so they can be restored from good backups while the backups are still good.

There should be a reasonable way to run such a process on a regular basis. Is there?

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sybersitizen said:

sybersitizen said:

………….

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There should be a reasonable way to run such a process on a regular basis. Is there?

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PieterB said:

Strobist said:

Tony Northrup just posted a video about that he just found out that he has lost many old personal photographs without knowing about it, and despite doing backups of backups.

It seems that digital are not a perfected backup solution yet, and that film can be a safer long time archive format, if stored and protected well.

So even if some people scoffs about the use of film in 2022, it might not be such a bad idea for important personal moments, that you want to be sure that last for a long time.

BR Strobist

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Well, a lot of old negative from commercial developpers have gone really bad. The negative from film developped at pro level might stay better. I have stored all my negative in the dark in special folders for long time storage. A lot of those negative seem to have lost their colour. So I seriously doubt film is a better storage solution.

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sybersitizen said:

Strobist said:

Tony Northrup just posted a video about that he just found out that he has lost many old personal photographs without knowing about it, and despite doing backups of backups.

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I watched it. Consider this:

SD card failures correspond to film camera light leaks.

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sybersitizen said:

I'm not sure what hard drive failures correspond to; perhaps lab errors that mess up negatives.

Bit rot corresponds to print fading.

All in all, film hasn't been a more reliable medium than digital in my personal experience. However, one advantage is that images on film can also exist digitally. That's not quite as easy to do in reverse.

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Michael Firstlight said:

sybersitizen said:

Strobist said:

Tony Northrup just posted a video about that he just found out that he has lost many old personal photographs without knowing about it, and despite doing backups of backups.

Click to expand...

I'm going to point out that the actual reason for his loss is not being addressed in this discussion. It wasn't addressed in his own video, either.

The reason for the loss was undiscovered corruption of data in his older stored files, and because he was not aware of the corruption, those damaged files were eventually replicated across all of his backups before he discovered the problem. Then it was too late.

That particular issue requires a special solution, not more backups, or different types of backups. It would be best addressed by having a method of periodically - and automatically - checking all those stored files to identify any corrupted ones so they can be restored from good backups while the backups are still good.

There should be a reasonable way to run such a process on a regular basis. Is there?

Click to expand...

I use Acronis for good reason. When it does a backup there's an option to check that does a sector-by-sector verification of the backup. That avoids undiscovered corruption of backed-up data. I'd not use anything else that didn't as my most trusted backup. I've had cases where I did a backup without sector-by-sector verification and the backups had problems. The free solutions are great as secondary backup tools and methods, but It's the old saying - one gets what one pays for.

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Trevor Sowers said:

sybersitizen said:

Strobist said:

Tony Northrup just posted a video about that he just found out that he has lost many old personal photographs without knowing about it, and despite doing backups of backups.

Click to expand...

I watched it. Consider this:

SD card failures correspond to film camera light leaks.

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Not rally A card failure is lost photos but a light leak is a photo that looks different than you expected

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Trevor Sowers said:

Trevor Sowers said:

I'm not sure what hard drive failures correspond to; perhaps lab errors that mess up negatives.

Bit rot corresponds to print fading.

All in all, film hasn't been a more reliable medium than digital in my personal experience. However, one advantage is that images on film can also exist digitally. That's not quite as easy to do in reverse.

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Slide film has proven to be far more reliable in my home which is why my most important photos are shot on E100

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sybersitizen said:

Michael Firstlight said:

sybersitizen said:

Strobist said:

Tony Northrup just posted a video about that he just found out that he has lost many old personal photographs without knowing about it, and despite doing backups of backups.

Click to expand...

I'm going to point out that the actual reason for his loss is not being addressed in this discussion. It wasn't addressed in his own video, either.

The reason for the loss was undiscovered corruption of data in his older stored files, and because he was not aware of the corruption, those damaged files were eventually replicated across all of his backups before he discovered the problem. Then it was too late.

That particular issue requires a special solution, not more backups, or different types of backups. It would be best addressed by having a method of periodically - and automatically - checking all those stored files to identify any corrupted ones so they can be restored from good backups while the backups are still good.

There should be a reasonable way to run such a process on a regular basis. Is there?

Click to expand...

I use Acronis for good reason. When it does a backup there's an option to check that does a sector-by-sector verification of the backup. That avoids undiscovered corruption of backed-up data. I'd not use anything else that didn't as my most trusted backup. I've had cases where I did a backup without sector-by-sector verification and the backups had problems. The free solutions are great as secondary backup tools and methods, but It's the old saying - one gets what one pays for.

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That doesn't address the problem at all. Verifying that a backup is an exact duplicate of the source does no good if the source is already corrupted and you don't know it's corrupted. That's exactly what happened to Northrup, and has happened to lots of other people.

The way to avoid this is to generate a hash or checksum of every file at the time when it's first created and you know it's healthy (and again if you make any edits to it). That collection of checksums is then kept for future reference and periodically compared to their corresponding files. Any discrepancy between those comparisons indicates that a file has changed without your knowledge, which is a warning that corruption has occurred. At that point you can go to your unaffected backups to restore a healthy version of the file.

I know what needs to be done. The stumbling block in my case is finding the Windows tools that will do it.

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sybersitizen said:

An alternative is to directly compare every source file to its corresponding backup version periodically before updating the backup, using a comparison method that can identify differences at the bit level. But that seems clunky, and would surely take much longer.

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Michael Firstlight said:

sybersitizen said:

Strobist said:

Tony Northrup just posted a video about that he just found out that he has lost many old personal photographs without knowing about it, and despite doing backups of backups.

Click to expand...

I'm going to point out that the actual reason for his loss is not being addressed in this discussion. It wasn't addressed in his own video, either.

The reason for the loss was undiscovered corruption of data in his older stored files, and because he was not aware of the corruption, those damaged files were eventually replicated across all of his backups before he discovered the problem. Then it was too late.

That particular issue requires a special solution, not more backups, or different types of backups. It would be best addressed by having a method of periodically - and automatically - checking all those stored files to identify any corrupted ones so they can be restored from good backups while the backups are still good.

There should be a reasonable way to run such a process on a regular basis. Is there?

Click to expand...

I use Acronis for good reason. When it does a backup there's an option to check that does a sector-by-sector verification of the backup. That avoids undiscovered corruption of backed-up data. I'd not use anything else that didn't as my most trusted backup. I've had cases where I did a backup without sector-by-sector verification and the backups had problems. The free solutions are great as secondary backup tools and methods, but It's the old saying - one gets what one pays for.

Mike

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Overrank said:

sybersitizen said:

... I know what needs to be done. The stumbling block in my case is finding the Windows tools that will do it.

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You can use the Microsoft program FCIV to generate the hashes ( https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/d92a713f-d793-7bd8-b0a4-4db811e29559 ). I think FCIV with the -v flag will verify a file system against a database you’ve already generated using FCIV ( see https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/File_Checksum_Integrity_Verifier_(FCIV)_Examples ).

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babis_greek said:

I have recordable cds that I had burned in 1997. So I trust cdr and dvdr . But I dont have a hdd so much old. And the trend is the recordable media to be abandoned from modern pcs. So , yes , I dont believe that digital photos will survive very much , if we dont... print them !

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babis_greek said:

I have recordable cds that I had burned in 1997. So I trust cdr and dvdr .

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sybersitizen said:

having a method of periodically - and automatically - checking all those stored files to identify any corrupted ones so they can be restored from good backups while the backups are still good.

There should be a reasonable way to run such a process on a regular basis. Is there?

Click to expand...

SterlingBjorndahl said:

Enterprise-level Storage Area Networks have background processes to check for "bit rot". This is required for enterprise-level medical imaging archives, amongst other things. I don't know if there are any similar solutions that would be considered affordable by most individuals.

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tassienick said:

Strobist said:

Tony Northrup just posted a video about that he just found out that he has lost many old personal photographs without knowing about it, and despite doing backups of backups.

It seems that digital are not a perfected backup solution yet, and that film can be a safer long time archive format, if stored and protected well.

So even if some people scoffs about the use of film in 2022, it might not be such a bad idea for important personal moments, that you want to be sure that last for a long time.

BR Strobist

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In theory, sure. In practice, my digital archives are in much better shape than my negative archives...

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Photoclever said:

Strobist said:

So even if some people scoffs about the use of film in 2022, it might not be such a bad idea for important personal moments, that you want to be sure that last for a long time.

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Let's assume a situation where caretakers actually care about long term storage and do everything right in both cases. Film can be destroyed by fire, flood, and even fungus. And sometimes film just degrades all by itself in storage. Digital can be easily replicated across multiple geographic locations and even multiple domains (hard drive, optical disc, thumb drive, tape drive). This mitigates both disaster risk and the risk that a storage medium you thought would last ends up degrading. To match that capability requires duplicating negs, with an inherent quality loss, and storing those as well. Which can be done in theory but which nobody but a museum would actually pay for. Speaking of money, if you really want to insure longevity you periodically review all stored photographs and duplicate them at regular intervals to "fresh" media. Something someone with digital media might actually do but no one will actually do with film.

There is no longevity comparison between the two. Digital wins this contest hands down.

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Photoclever said:

Now let's assume the real world situation for 99% of people: film thrown in a shoebox (if it's kept at all), digital thrown on a single hard drive, and prints in an album (if they're made at all). Neither one wins this because the hard drive will fail and the shoebox will likely get tossed in the trash at some future spring cleaning event. The prints will survive unless/until there is a fire or flood, or the prints themselves degrade.

Which brings me to the #1 real world step you can take to insure your photographs survive a while after you're gone, even with 'normies' handling things: make prints. 8x10 albums of pigment ink prints in proper archival sleeves. Duplicate albums distributed to different people who might actually care. Great grandchildren might actually keep the album around since they can thumb through it and wonder how things were, who people are. Instead of just tossing it out with the garbage which is likely to happen with both film, optical discs, and hard drives that won't connect to anything they own.

You could include, in the back pages of the album, optical discs or duplicate negs, depending on your medium. Since it's part of the album it's not as likely to get tossed, and someone down the line might actually care enough to try to do something with it.

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SterlingBjorndahl said:

"Bit rot" is outside of our control, e.g., high speed cosmic rays ripping through disk platters and randomly flipping bits. (Interestingly, that happens less frequently when the disk is close to sea level because the atmosphere stops a lot of the highly charged particles. This has been a consideration in data centre design for over 20 years that I am aware of.)

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