Steve411

How will you save important pictures for your great grand children? Just to stir the important topic of long term photo protection... Forget your cell phone pictures. Forget Facebook, and forget cloud storage. How two generations from now will your kin folks access your key family and photo treasures ? My son invited me to join his for fee cloud storage site which I declined. A month ago he received a request from the site for him to remove his thousands of photos as they were discontinuing their general public offering. I know what I am doing to "save forever" and I would appreciate hearing what your plans are. Thanks, Steve411

Joe Blow

Portable HDD.
https://www.newegg.com/Western-Digital-Portable-External-Hard-Drives/BrandSubCat/ID-1306-3400?nm_mc=KNC-GoogleKWLess&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleKWLess-_-DSA-_-CategoryPages-_-NA&gclid=CjwKCAiA15vTBRAHEiwA7Snfc0JCrjTcLfb1BCYJ198X3rQ0L2Sqdf6rFLjHdrh3nn0CVe-LobyodBoC5cEQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

CD/portable HD right now. It's up to my kids and grandkids to migrate them to a new media after I'm gone.
(IF they want them...)

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

MDisks in safe and Amazon S3 cloud (children have login and PW)

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

I'm sure that nobody in my family will care but in case they do, I have all of my negatives in sleeves categorized by year and month and I have prints in shoeboxes by year also.

Mac Loc: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia now Hernando Co. Fl.

Print them and put them in a shoebox.

wingclui44 Loc: CT USA

Right now , I am rely on the external drive, but I doubt it the electronic will last that long, and will it compatible to any future computer or device that can read them. I think one way for sure is printing the best out on 4" X 6" with good printer and put them in albums which is an old traditional way to store photo.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Anything not physically printed with a physical presence will not exist for that long a time frame for the average person. First, data files and backups will get lost in the shuffle as computers, backup drives, and other backup media fail, grt reformated , become damaged, or are given away or misplaced, especially after the death of an elderly relative. Second, even if accessible few great grand children will waste time going through 50,000 or 100,000 electronic images to find those relatively few that are personally important. Finally as technology changes so will the formatting and storage of data and the equipment needed to read it. Its unlikely the average person will be able to read data stored today on available devices in 30-50 years. How many of us have a 5.25" or 3.5" floppy disk reader? How about a tape backup drive reader? Technology and data storage is constantly evolving and it is reasonable to expect that it will continue to do so. My advice is to print out the important stuff on the best photo paper available and store it in a well marked high quality storage box and store it in an area away from extremes of heat and humidity.

Steve411

Gee What is a negative Ha !, At least you have a physical artifact of your pictures. It literally took me 4 years spare time to scan negatives and photos. The trash pile was the size of a VW Beetle. Usually one of the kids or cousins develops a passion for this save family history venture. May your photo's live on.. Steve411

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

That's assuming they have a reader for those disks in 50 years and that Amazon will still be storing your images and allowing access to your great grandchildren 50 years from now even if they still have a password passed from you children to your grandchildren to them. Lets face it, that's not very likely.

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

I don't even scan them. Sometimes I scan a print and post it on FB or Flickr or here but mainly, the output is the print itself.

wilsondl2 Loc: Lincoln, Nebraska

For individual and family - FamilySearch.org -You may find pictures of some of your ancestors and someday some of your children's grandchildren may find you. Free from my church The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) - dave

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

Our future generations will be much, much more digital than we have even thought of being. I have provided disk drives with Lightroom exports to a few of the children and now have grandchildren getting old enough to indulge in the digital arena. They will soon start receiving some of those hard drives, as well.

For what it's worth, I've never seen my grandparent's shoeboxes full of photos. Far as I know, my maternal grandparents never owned a camera.

So, I do what I can do and hope it's enough. I still enjoy the craft, whether any of them are seen or not.

Steve411

Agreed, HQ prints on good paper of key images is a key to longevity. In checking with the National Gallery I find that they have the " mother of all scanning challenges" and today are re-scanning perpetually, currently in TIFF format. From a print standpoint would you have a suggestion on inkjet or dye or ?. I also have two 4TB drives that I alternate/switch between my photo lab and bank safety deposit box for updates. Of course if no descendants are interested... game over. Steve411

rjaywallace Loc: Wisconsin

Steve411, I think we used to refer to them as 'shirt boxes', back when you received a free box when you bought 1-2 shirts at a department store. I have organized the box with 9x12 manilla envelopes, with names of subjects, like "Dad", "Mom", "Tenspeed" (my cat), "Aunt Jane", etc. Not exactly archive quality but simple and effective.

Okay, everybody, you can un-cringe now... /Ralph