My father told me he wanted to make USB flash drives of all the scanned and digitized family photos and other assorted letters and mementos. He planned to distribute them to all family members hoping that at least one set would survive. When I explained that they ought to be recipes to new media every N number of years or risk deteriorating or becoming unreadable (like a floppy disk when you have no floppy drive), he was genuinely shocked. He lost interest in the project that he’d thought was so bullet proof.

  • Random123@fedia.io
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    7 days ago

    That shouldnt be all doom like.

    Easiest thing is to make 2-3 copies of usbs and label the date the usb began its use, put a rough estimate on when the next generation should repeat the whole process until the pictures become irrelevent.

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      7 days ago

      USB sticks and SSDs are no good for long-term storage. The data on them degrades rapidly if they’re not powered up. Spinning disks last longer. So your process would be better done with those.