The end of an era!

[Capt. Morgan]

Originally Posted by August

So what would be the most efficient and long lasting digital image storage method?...

How long lasting would you want them to be?

Frequent backups to an external HD (or two -with one stored off-site) seems the best compromise to me. Flash-drive, HD, optical disk, tape; they're all going to fail at some point, it's just a matter of staying on top of the backups and having redundant copies - and hoping that all the copies don't go south at the same time.

[August]

Originally Posted by Capt. Morgan

How long lasting would you want them to be?

As long as possible. What is possible?

Frequent backups to an external HD (or two -with one stored off-site) seems the best compromise to me. Flash-drive, HD, optical disk, tape; they're all going to fail at some point, it's just a matter of staying on top of the backups and having redundant copies - and hoping that all the copies don't go south at the same time.

Sounds like a lot of work. With good environmental controls what would be the best if left undisturbed?

[Capt. Morgan]

At this time, digital media can be stored for as long as there is someone willing to actively maintain it - transfer the data to new media as the old media degrades or becomes obsolete - recode the files to newer formats as the old ones become unreadable. Active maintenance is the key, more so than the particular media used.

It sounds like a lot of work, but it really isn't. Plug HD/Flash-drive into computer, start backup program, go to bed, next day take backup drive to work/friends/moms for storage. Repeat annually, or as needed.

Things may/should be much better in 10 years.

As to what will last the longest - no one really knows.

[DarkFish]

Originally Posted by August

Sounds like a lot of work. With good environmental controls what would be the best if left undisturbed?

Really depends on the type of memory. There are types of memory that need to be refreshed every few minutes/seconds/whatever(look for DRAM), and there are types of memory that can theoretically keep their information indefinitely. Some of those need a constant power supply (SRAM) whereas others such as a hard disk or flash memory should keep their stored information pretty much forever. (Flash memory deteriorates with every time it's rewritten, which means that after a certain amount of writes (in the order of tens of thousands) it becomes unusable. Which is why flash is only used in applications where only few write operations are needed, like mp3-players)