Today, most of us trust our lives’ most important work, events, and memories to digital storage.
two common problems: storage media doesn’t last forever, and modern software might not be able to read old files. Social media and trusting our data to the cloud only makes things more complicated. Our digital lives aren’t just on our devices, they’re spread across the entire Internet. How can we preserve our digital legacies, and make sure they’ll be accessible in the future?
Which do you think is better – physical or virtual copy!!
can be expensive (for digital)
Paper/ when laminated and saved for a long time (safer durability)
Digital – available to the wider public// but cannot be guranteed to be lasted for a long time since it hasnt been tested (technology is too new)
- devices can be decayed, too old, have to be so thorough with bacteria even, can fade, etc.
•Media matters
Before we get start worrying about how to save, you need to decide what to save. Email, apps, documents, and the photos and videos we shoot and edit all add up, so make sure to keep tabs on the things you want to hold onto for the foreseeable future.
•So what’s the best plan?
If you think your might want to save your digital life for posterity, here are the main things to consider:
- Make archives. Store photos, video, and audio to whatever media seems most sensible, whether optical, flash, or traditional hard drives. Test those copies at least every two years, migrate those archives to fresh (or perhaps different) media every three to five years.
- Make copies. Make more than one copy of your archive – if one has a problem, it’s unlikely the other will have the same problem. Consider using different storage media for different copies.
- Make regular backups. Back up your devices on a regular schedule. Ideally, you should make more than one, keeping one at an offsite location.
- Request regular backups of your social media activity. Store them with your archived files.
- Convert documents and media out of proprietary formats. Open formats more likely to be supported in the distant future.
- Store your archives in a cool, dry place. It doesn’t have to be a climate controlled room, but big changes in temperature and humidity reduce media lifespans.
- Consider encrypting your archive.This has a potentially huge downside: if you lose your password – or or decryption software isn’t available in the future — you lose everything. But, if done right, you aren’t vulnerable if your archive is lost or stolen.
Instead of clarifying the meaning of this archive, then, let’s encourage everyone to start archiving their data .
haya souliman 