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Computer help: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents?
- 5/1/09 10:39 AM
PDF can be edited
by DrJoeS - 5/3/09 7:19 AM In reply to: PDF by rbsjrxWordPerfect Office versions X3 and later allow importing of PDF files, editing them, and subsequently saving back to PDF or to any other format you desire. As opposed to Word (Microsoft is so proud of its programs that it doesn't consider anyone would ever use another!), Corel has always allowed its programs (WP, QPro, etc) to open and save in other formats. Try it!
future proofing data
by Nancy Ryan3 - 5/5/09 6:28 AM In reply to: PDF is the best option available at present by kriswaI am thinking of my data as somewhat unimportant except to me and possibly my decendents. I plan to save in nonproprietroy digital format such as pdf and jpeg for documents and photos until I am too old to care about going to the bother. But I will make a photo non acid paper copy of everything I have when I'm 70 years old. Put it all in a cardboard or non acid container, cover in tinfoil and finally seal the whole shabang in wax. The kids and grandkids will be responsible for updating the digital copies. The wax sealed paper copies will stay sealed with instructions not to open unless prepared to reseal in same fasion (instructions on the outside as to the method used). Who knows who might find my many animal and landscape pictures of use in an event that earth may need to be renovated or restored at some future time. I know this sounds drastic but who knows what the future will bring. In two hundred years our world will not look like it does today. And that's a "for certain"
It is a question of both document formats and media
by stjson - 4/25/09 5:24 AM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Dear Phillip,
You raise a very important question. And in fact, the question should be expanded, to include not only the file formats, but also the storage media. If you burn the files to a CD, who can guarantee that the data on the CD will still be readable in a not to distant future, both from a format point of view, as well as for the consistency of the media itself?
Sorry to say, but as I see it, the only way to guarantee that you can recover your documnees in the future is to constantly recycle and update the files to current formats, as well as using fresh media and the latest and greatest softwares and operating systems. It will be hard work, but I do not see any other way.
Good luck!
Stefan Johansson
Brazil
Nonsense!
by rbsjrx - 4/25/09 7:25 AM In reply to: It is a question of both document formats and media by stjson"Sorry to say, but as I see it, the only way to guarantee that you can recover your [documents] in the future is to constantly recycle and update the files to current formats..."
You must be a Windows user. Outside of the insular universe created by Microsoft, file formats almost always retain backward compatibility. This is because file formats are based on standards to which more than one company has agreed upon.
It's both amazing and disturbing that marketing departments (and not just Microsoft's) have trained consumers to accept that the way their companies do business is the natural order of things. People have no trouble accepting the necessity of standards in metrology (weights and measures), but readily ignore standards for other things such as file formats. The standards _do_ exist! It's just that some companies are arrogant and greedy enough to feel free to ignore them.
How can I open photos scanned 15 year ago.....
by diogojsilva - 4/25/09 6:10 AM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I don´t remember the system version and devices I used at this time, but the media seems normal physicallly preserved. Today my Windows XP or Vista deny access to them.
Excuse my bad English.
Thanks.Diogo
Admin
by DADSGETNDOWN - 5/1/09 6:02 PM In reply to: How can I open photos scanned 15 year ago..... by diogojsilvaAre you administrator ? You have FULL admin rights ?.
What formats are they in ?.
What photo program are you using ?
research. identify the file format, find the specs on it.
by mikefxlee - 5/6/09 2:58 AM In reply to: How can I open photos scanned 15 year ago..... by diogojsilvaIf your are lucky, there might be an older machine around with the software and drivers that can read it (hey I still have a Mac SE). If not, probably run it through a binary viewer and see if there are any clues. Often, there are ASCII marks identifying some aspect of the file format.
Do a search for 'hexviewer software' and download one. open the file with it and see if anything shows up in ASCII. If so, that should help ID the file format. If not, it will be a little trickier but still can be done.
The Future of your Data
by waytron - 4/25/09 6:13 AM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I admire your forethought and willingness to even contemplate the future of your data so that you and others will be able to access it in the years to come. I am sure that there are probably some past owners of Polaroid’s Polarvision or Sony’s Batamax that wished they had paid attention to this. Unfortunately, there is really no absolute way to future proof your data other than re-evaluating your data every few years to be able to catch fading formats in time to convert and save them before the technology is obsolete. And even if you had a crystal ball to pick a format that will be here forever, you still have the problem of the recording media failing and not being readable. With reports of premature failures of burned CD’s and DVD’s, USB drives that hardly last a year or two and other formats that may become obsolete, you have to also consider re-recording your data onto new media every few years. This whole issue is definitely a big concern and I am already seeing occasional issues with reading really old Word, Wordpad, Wordstar and Wordperfect document formats as well as burned CD’s and DVD’s that are unreadable. I will be interested to see what others have to say about this, but I think that all you can really do is pay attention to the trends, re-evaluate your data every few years and make sure you keep multiple copies of your data on more than one type of media. Heck, you could always just print everything on paper and save it that way?
Dana
Wayland Computer
Several Solutions
by Flatworm - 4/25/09 6:44 AM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
It is highly likely that, for documents that contain text only or for which the unformatted text is the only essential component, the .txt format will always be readable by just about anything. It is not application-specific.
For photographs, the non-application-specific .jpg format has been stable for nearly 20 years now and shows no signs of going away. The .gif format is even older but has limitations that render it undesirable.
The .pdf format, of course, can preserve the fully formatted textual and graphical format of nearly any document. While it is proprietary (owned and controlled by Adobe), it seems to be as permanent a standard as anything and is likely to endure even after the Adobe Corporation is merely a distant memory.
Of course, this only addresses the data itself and not the media on which it is stored. Here things become a little dicier. I doubt that anything in the world of media is truly permanent, although CDs and DVDs are a pretty good bet at least for the relatively near term.
Think of all the storage media from the past you'd have trouble reading. Go back to late '70s and your data would be on big reel tapes, or those really modernistical random-access 12" or 8" floppy disks. Try to get a reader for them nowadays! Most tape formats have an even shorter lifespan (as does the tape itself). Remember all those Iomega drives in the '80s and '90s? But it's even hard now to find a computer with 5.25" floppies that were so ubiquitous in the '80s, or even the 1.44 mb floppies that were so common throughout the '90s. They're basically gone.
There are some indications now that CDs are in the first stage of going away. Nearly any optical drive peripheral can still read and write them, but distribution of software on that format is beginning to wane now in favor of DVD, which is the first step presaging a media type's demise. With blank DVDs now occasionally available under a dime apiece, CDs no longer seem as nifty as they once were.
The march of progress has its drawbacks. Maybe you should print everything out on paper. It's a bulky storage media, but it seems to have real staying power!
A minor correction
by rbsjrx - 4/25/09 7:43 AM In reply to: Several Solutions by Flatworm"The .pdf format, of course, can preserve the fully formatted textual and graphical format of nearly any document. While it is proprietary (owned and controlled by Adobe), it seems to be as permanent a standard as anything and is likely to endure even after the Adobe Corporation is merely a distant memory."
While Adobe still holds the patents, it has irrevocably licensed them freely for others to use. The PDF standard is now codified as an international standard, ISO 32000-1:2008. So, yes, Adobe still controls the future of the PDF format, but regardless of Adobe's future, the current implementation, as described in the standard, is no longer subject to their whims and is freely usable by anyone.
Data in the future
by ProToolsGeek - 5/3/09 4:58 PM In reply to: Several Solutions by FlatwormNothing is permanent. Period. Even text chopped into rocks thousands of years ago got lost in time, BUT, they're still readable if found, and are just as good now as then.
We deal with this all the time where I work. You Never want to archive valuable data on a CDr or DVDr. You never want to archive anything on a hard drive, and I don't care who makes it. You still need removable media of some type. Magnetic tape of some sort is still the most reliable of the bunch. On schedule, archives will copy their tapes every ten years or so to new tapes.
The CDr thing was hot for a while at archives until the data started coming in that they're NOT reliable. One archive threw out all their old tapes only to find the CDr masters didn't work. They had to spend a fortune to have a data recovery place get as much off the discs as they could. Even after that, they lost a lot of data.
The extreme I heard about was a "place in Hollywood" that archived their founding leader's speeches on stainless steel discs and archived the players to play L Ron's stuff back after the apocalypse. The plates are sealed in nitrogen.
Paper does not last, either.
by daycom - 5/6/09 2:20 AM In reply to: Several Solutions by FlatwormThe solution to print it all on paper is not really viable, either. Unless stored under fairly controlled conditions of temperature and especially humidity, the paper itself can deteriorate in time - not to mention what can happen to the ink that is used.
Save the software......and the hardware
by yasinghMD - 4/25/09 7:17 AM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I would save the software needed to open these files. It may be better to also tuck an unused laptop away every 10-15 years with all these programs installed.
File formats.. Here today gone tomorrow.
by hawk318 - 4/25/09 8:00 AM In reply to: How do you future proof your digitally archived documents? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Well Doctor Phil (sorry about that) I'm afraid, there isn't a real answer to your problem. There is no guarantee that any format that is here today will be around in 50 years.
That being said there is no guarantee that any media that you save your data will still be usable in 50 years... DVD's haven't been around long enough to prove their manufacturers claim that they will last that long. (some cheaper brands have been reported to have already started to disintegrate)
I'm sorry to say that with all the electronic data we have at our disposal today.... Printing out on a good 'acid free' paper is still the best way to preserve documents for posterity.
Will Microsoft still be around? If so will they still have software that is backward compatible? Will .PDF still be around with all the newer formats coming?
If you intend to save anything in some electronic format, there is nothing to prevent whatever or whomever from dropping that particular venue. I have been using MS Works data base and have over 1200 entries. I had to buy Works as well as Office as Office has no translator to that particular format. So it was a matter of redoing, or buying a new version.
Works database will be dropped at some point and there will be no way to open it if my current Works will not run on what ever OS is current at the time.. (see my point?)
As far as photo's (3 generations worth)I've saved them all in:
.jpeg (which will lose some quality over time each time it is opened)
.tiff and .pdf.
Ok so it cost me a few extra DVD's... But then again as I mentioned above... Who's to guarantee those DVD's will even make it to the next decade or two....
I reprinted all the older photos using a quality printer, acid free photo quality paper and ink that is suppose to last 50 years (again no guarantees)by Epson.
What if Ben Franklin had save his letters to an electronic format? The new letters that were just found, would any one had been to read them if they were on any thing other than paper?
Would "Ye Olde Microsoft As Good as Paper" format still be supported today?
Short answer... If you want to make sure someone can read of view your items.... Use both electronic and "Good old Paper!"
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