How to avoid digital disaster

Currently in the news, here in Toronto, is the story of a hospital patient who had a family laptop stolen from his room. The laptop contained three years worth of irreplaceable photos of the patient’s granddaughter who recently died. The family is pleading for the return of the digital pictures.

(Added May 13: updated story here: laptop recovered but hard drive erased.)

In the days of film, people had no choice but to get prints made from their negatives. But in today’s digital world, many people keep their pictures only on the memory card in their camera or cell phone. This is always a huge mistake. Prints are not often made these days, as photos are usually viewed only on a device’s LCD screen, which saves the small cost of prints. This, too, is always a mistake.

While some folks transfer their digital pictures to a computer, they don’t back-up their hard drive. Again, this is always a digital disaster waiting to happen.

By contrast, professional photographers always store digital images with, at least, triple redundancy, for example: on a hard disc and on duplicate CDs/DVDs. All professional photographers regularly back-up their hard drives. While this doesn’t guarantee that a digital disaster can’t happen, it does dramatically lower the odds.

When a natural disaster strikes, say, an earthquake, tornado, flood or fire, why do people save their family photo albums first? Personal pictures are the most valued treasure in one’s life.

If you take (digital) family pictures, throw yourself a life preserver today. Please back-up all your important photos onto, at least, duplicate CDs/DVDs. Do not buy the store brand or the cheap off-brand discs. They’re useless for long-term storage. Do not use re-writable discs.

The best chance for long-term storage is on a CD-R made with phthalocyanine dye on a gold disc (real gold, not just gold-coloured). Unfortunately, most manufacturers don’t tell the consumer how their discs are made.

Phthalocyanine dye is patented by the Mitsui company and is licensed to a small handful of CD manufacturers. Do your homework. These discs might cost an extra $1 or so, but how important are your photos?

Blu-Ray discs seem to offer good archive quality. But for most people, this is not an option.

Another solution is with gold DVDs. For technical reasons, phthalocyanine dye cannot be used on DVDs. There are also high quality gold CDs that use a type of azo dye.

Also, have a second life preserver ready. Please back-up your hard drive onto an external hard drive(s). External drives are inexpensive and back-up software is free. But remember that all hard drives will fail sooner or later.

You will never regret the time and (small amount of) money spent on backing up your priceless family photos and any other valuable data.

Most important: get prints made.

Prints can outlast any computer, any hard drive and any disc. Plus, prints are more enjoyable to look at than any LCD screen. Promise.