Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 74 posts

Re: Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever

#61

Post by sedatk »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #55
sedatk wrote: post #23

"Probably" is doing a lot of heavylifting there. Digital backup discipline for consumers emerged way before digital cameras. We used to have backups in floppies, and then CD-R's, which were common and made physical backups very cheap. Not just data, we had to back up software too because we didn't have an app store to reinstall them from. In the late 90's, advent of MP3 also made people focus more on digital backup s…

> … digital backup discipline for consumers … You have a lot more faith in typical consumers than I do. I wouldn’t call any of those I knew in the 90s/00s “disciplined” with data backups, let alone the wherewithal to have considered software backups.

Discipline not in a strict 3-2-1 sense, but more pragmatic like “if I lose this, it’ll be too much trouble”. Everyone had a box of floppies or spindle of CDs for their backups. Backup was part of life because the cost of data loss was immense.

Re: Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever

#62

Post by ofrzeta »

socalgal2 wrote: post #43

I backed up my photos religiously for years. From my first digital camera in like 1995. First to CD-ROMs, then DVD-ROMs, then hard drives, and I included online backups to Google Cloud (real backups via arq, not Google Photos). My arq bot was running on my 2014 Intel Macbook Pro which would read the photos off my home server and back them up. (the server also being a local backup). Then I got my M1 Mac and IIRC, arq…

> when I pass away, no one will want them.

That's the point. I am lucky that I have kids and maybe they will like to take a look at some pics once in a while but certainly they won't go through ten thousands of images.

Re: Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever

#63

Post by ofrzeta »

loeg wrote: post #4
1970-01-01 wrote: post #3

In 2006 I successfully copied all pictures off my Motorola Razr via Bluetooth to my PC in one go. Try doing that with your new iPhone Air. Who's losing old photos again?

iPhone AirDrop works really well?

From a UX perspective Airdrop is super nice. I don't know if there are working implementations for other OSs. Just found this here but didn't yet test it https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop (hasn't been updated in 2 years, so maybe not too promising)

Re: Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever

#64

Post by ofrzeta »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #48

If I wrote a similar article, its last paragraph would be a call-to-arms to save M-Disc, which the industry is - absurdly - abandoning. M-Disc is the only real solution to preserving data a whole lifetime. It is the both the longest-lasting storage medium, and the most compatible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC

I have some M-Discs and a writer and a I have written maybe two DVDs up to now (that's a lot of images, anyway). Let's see if their promises hold up.

From the Wikipedia page I can't see that the industry is abandonign the format. For sure it's not the mass market but Verbatim are still producing the discs, it seems.

Re: Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever

#65

Post by monerozcash »

loeg wrote: post #4
1970-01-01 wrote: post #3

In 2006 I successfully copied all pictures off my Motorola Razr via Bluetooth to my PC in one go. Try doing that with your new iPhone Air. Who's losing old photos again?

iPhone AirDrop works really well?

I didn't find AirDrop to work very well while trying to airdrop only 1TB of photos/videos from my phone to my MacBook, YMMV. Not only was it really slow, but occasionally it seemed to freeze and there weren't really any meaningful progress indicators.

Re: Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever

#66

Post by stavros »

kakacik wrote: post #8

A bit too much drama for nothing - storage was never reliable, HDDs were dying since forever. So anybody serious with backups did multiple physical copies, which is a strategy relevant also today. With that, nothing is lost unless facing a proper clusterfuck. Just checked my photos from 2004 trip to US where I bought my first digital camera, yepp all good across few older and one new HDD.

The article's point is that nobody knows this, which is true. This was a non-event for me too, as I just moved my entire dataset as I upgraded disks (and had backups) but I had multiple disks and was meticulous with having my data in one place, two things that basically no non-techie will do.

Re: Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever

#67

Post by stavros »

stackedinserter wrote: post #19

Not only for early 2000's, even now people routinely keep ALL their photos on their phones, without making any copies. Take a photo -> send to someone -> keep them forever -> delete when there's no space left, that's standard lifecycle, at least in my circle.

Really? Most people I know have either iCloud or Google Photos. Not that I prefer that approach, but it sure beats losing everything when you swap phones.

Re: Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever

#68

Post by stavros »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #48

If I wrote a similar article, its last paragraph would be a call-to-arms to save M-Disc, which the industry is - absurdly - abandoning. M-Disc is the only real solution to preserving data a whole lifetime. It is the both the longest-lasting storage medium, and the most compatible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC

> Blu-ray M-discs can be both written and read in most standard Blu-ray drives and are certified by the Blu-ray Disc Association to meet all current standard specifications as of 2019.

This is extremely interesting, I had no idea. Too bad it doesn't see more widespread usage.

Re: Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever

#69

Post by loeg »

monerozcash wrote: post #65
loeg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhone AirDrop works really well?

I didn't find AirDrop to work very well while trying to airdrop only 1TB of photos/videos from my phone to my MacBook, YMMV. Not only was it really slow, but occasionally it seemed to freeze and there weren't really any meaningful progress indicators.

I don't think GP's 2006 Motorola Razr would transfer 1TB of photos especially quickly, either...

Re: Why your early 2000s photos are probably lost forever

#70

Post by monerozcash »

loeg wrote: post #69
monerozcash wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't find AirDrop to work very well while trying to airdrop only 1TB of photos/videos from my phone to my MacBook, YMMV. Not only was it really slow, but occasionally it seemed to freeze and there weren't really any meaningful progress indicators.

I don't think GP's 2006 Motorola Razr would transfer 1TB of photos especially quickly, either...

I somehow doubt anyone has ever experienced this problem with the 2006 Motorola Razr
Post reply on HN