Yellow is typically the first to go. Being so light, it fades quickly, taking down the greens with it. Oranges too. In the absence of yellow, brown reddens.

Fortunately, we live in the digital age, where colors never fade. Of course, with new media comes new problems. CDs will last 100 years, remember? Nope. You see, when you burn a CD you are actually burning a chemical layer on the CD, turning the chemical black. So, you have a binary storage method used on the CD. Unburned sections are zeros and burnt sections are ones. But, what happens when those burnt areas begin to fade? Data loss. What was once read as a one is now read as a zero.

Magnetic media is better, but still subject to decay as well as data loss caused by exposure to magnetic fields.

The truth is that some CDs can begin to lose data after a few years.

How can you preserve your precious memories?

Store your most precious images and data files in multiple forms of media. Storage media is relatively cheap these days. Store a copy of your files on a hard drive and another on CDs or DVDs.

Transfer to new media as it becomes available. Check your data periodically. Burn fresh CDs or DVDs from time to time. Store CDs and DVDs in a dark location.

If you have old photos or videos, get them digitized ASAP. Video tapes, like the old VHS ones, have a lifetime of about twenty years, give or take. So, if you have old home videos from the 1990’s and especially the 1980’s, you need to get those digitized now!

You can use commercial services for the transfer or, if you are tech savvy and have a lot of tapes to convert, do it yourself. But be aware that since everything is moving to digital, it’s going to be harder and harder to find equipment that will be able to transfer your old VHS tapes to your computer or DVD.

When scanning your old photos into your computer, scan it in at the highest optical resolution you can. You want to retain as much data as possible. If you scan in at low resolution, which may be a default setting for some scanners especially if they are geared around scanning images for use on the web, the photo may look fine on your screen but won’t look as good when printed and especially so when making enlargements.

If photos are especially important to you, do not throw them away after scanning them in. In a few years, you may be able to afford a newer and better scanner that can scan the photo at an even higher resolution. But, still scan today so that you at least have a copy should something happen to the original.

If your photo collection is entirely digital, you might also want to print out valued images and keep them in a photo album. That way, should anything ever happen to the digital copy, you will still have something.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 at 10:05 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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