I went to a weird conference about 10 years ago and it was very much about data retrieval and long term storage of digital media. I’d say that the speaker was 80% dead on and 20% full of shit. One thing he was very clear about: he lost his own wedding photos due to his own overconfidence in digital storage technology and his wife is still deeply pissed about it.
I still have my wedding photos on CD rom somewhere, so I’m sure they’re safe. /s
In related news, my parents are downsizing and my mom just asked me if I wanted my great-grandparents’ wedding certificate. It’s in great condition.
Copy those photos now. 20 years ago I was obsessed with burning DVD’s to last a long time. I researched the best quality media that was rated for 100 years (Verbatim AZZO). I used diagnostic tools from a specialized cd burning forum that showed the pi/pio errors so you knew if you had made a quality burned DVD. (Even though burners were rated 2x-16x, each burner had a sweet spot of minimal errors for a particular media. In my case it was 4x.)
Last year my niece said the wedding photo DVD I gave her 15 years ago was unreadable. I checked my extra copies that had been kept in the basement in black dvd storage containers and they were bad too. Fortunately I had backups on hard drives that I migrate every few years from server to server.
Unpowered USB or SSD’s that haven’t been refreshed are only good for 10 years too.
Every year I pick out my favorite pictures of the year and print a physical photo album.
