There are just a handful of photos from my childhood. They are prints, in a box in my home, and no copies exist. The same goes for photos of my parents and grandparents. A catastrophe like a fire or flood would destroy the photos. But many of the photos have survived for over five decades, migration across the world, and multiple moves.
Most of the photos of my adult life are digital, with some prints. All of the videos are digital. And they are scattered, with some on hard drives, CDs, and “in the cloud.” Hard drives fail, CDs degrade, and cloud services go out of business. I want to make sure my digital memories are preserved and accessible during my lifetime, and well into my son’s lifetime as well.
Before I can solve the archiving problem, I need to understand more about my digital memories, namely:
- What I want to archive
- Where it resides
- How to extract it
More on that next.