Curious about possibly using forever.com for archival digital photo storage

I am putting this under editing because I can't find a better category.
So I am an avid photographer and currently trying to figure out a solution for archival storage of digital photos. I don't have much data (probably around 50GB of photos that I need archival storage for) and I am trying to find a solution. I am currently looking into forever.com which I can get 25GB of storage for $500 one time purchase. Platforms like Google Drive are much cheaper, but I would like to store my photos in a way for the next generation, not on a platform that will delete them if I don't log in for 2 years.
I have been in two house fires, three home break-ins, and a car fire so the idea of an "archival" cloud data storage platform is very appealing to me because of the "off-site" aspect. My career path will necessitate being on the road a lot so being able to access my files via the internet is also appealing. Currently, my data is stored on external SSD drives onsite, and I am in the process of organizing it. My other idea for storage would be to burn my files to archival disks (M-Disks or Gold CDs) and put one copy in a safety deposit box at the bank.

Nothing is forever.

Nothing is forever, but your current method is a good start on at least several decades, especially with duplicate SSD drives or archival disks in different locations with the data re-copied to fresh devices from time to time. I would stay away from the 'cloud' for archiving, but it's certainly convenient for access to duplicate images.

A proven way to preserve for the indefinite future would be to print out your photos with high quality pigment inkjet or analog internegative on archival paper and store multiple sets of copies in multiple cool, dark places.

I've experimented with copying digital images from a high-resolution flat screen computer monitor onto medium-format color reversal film and the results look surprisingly good. Negative B&W acetate film will last at least a century, and polyester base likely even longer. Many original B&W positives or negatives on glass or paper have so far survived almost 200 years.

Whatever you do, be sure to append plenty of who-what-where-when information to each picture. Then organize and package your collection in such an appealing way that future antiquarians or descendants will be intrigued enough to take a look.

christislord said:

Platforms like Google Drive are much cheaper, but I would like to store my photos in a way for the next generation, not on a platform that will delete them if I don't log in for 2 years.

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If it's really for archival purposes, I'd consider using two cloud storage services side by side so you've got a fallback scenario in case either of them poops out for some reason. That will give you the chance to re-source the solution that failed while your images remain available through the other service.

Personally I'm more optimistic about cloud storage than DIY solutions given the economies of scale and scope that a commercial operation can achieve, allowing them to hire a lot more talent and competence than we can individually Google and learn through forums. In my mind, this is one of the many areas where it makes sense to pay for expertise.

christislord said:

I am putting this under editing because I can't find a better category.
So I am an avid photographer and currently trying to figure out a solution for archival storage of digital photos. I don't have much data (probably around 50GB of photos that I need archival storage for) and I am trying to find a solution. I am currently looking into forever.com which I can get 25GB of storage for $500 one time purchase. Platforms like Google Drive are much cheaper, but I would like to store my photos in a way for the next generation, not on a platform that will delete them if I don't log in for 2 years.
I have been in two house fires, three home break-ins, and a car fire so the idea of an "archival" cloud data storage platform is very appealing to me because of the "off-site" aspect. My career path will necessitate being on the road a lot so being able to access my files via the internet is also appealing. Currently, my data is stored on external SSD drives onsite, and I am in the process of organizing it. My other idea for storage would be to burn my files to archival disks (M-Disks or Gold CDs) and put one copy in a safety deposit box at the bank.

Click to expand...

why not just store a couple of copies on different SD cards and keep them in different locations including a safety deposit box at the bank?

RalphLambrecht said:

why not just store a couple of copies on different SD cards and keep them in different locations including a safety deposit box at the bank?

Click to expand...

SD cards generally use NAND memory and this type of memory isn't really suited for long-term storage. It's a complicated topic, but the gist of it is that it's pretty much unpredictable how long the data on any given SD card will last, and that the data retention will depend on environmental factors, particularly temperature. For multi-year back I would not opt for some form of flash memory. In my view, an active/online form of storage that employs redundancy and error checking/correction (e.g. RAID5) is far more sensible. This is one of the arguments for the case I made for cloud storage, since these do use these kinds of storage schemes.

Of course, one could maintain a 'farm' of flash cards/thumbsticks/etc. with a decent degree of redundancy and revive the data e.g. annually and pre-emptively replace the media periodically. In my experience, such systems that rely on our own discipline tend to fail at some point as discipline breaks down...Which is another argument for cloud storage, since it generally automatically synchronizes without manual intervention.

Have a look at AWS Glacier. No guarantee it will be around for your next generations, though.
Alternatively, print your digital images on photographic glass plates (trichrome if you need color). If processed and stored properly they will last a few generations.

christislord said:

I have been in two house fires, three home break-ins, and a car fire so the idea of an "archival" cloud data storage platform is very appealing to me because of the "off-site" aspect.

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Statistically you are probably the safest person now after having gone thru these....

But seriously, paying upfront for perpetual storage doesn't sound enticing to me. I would read the small print - under what circumstances can they punt on holding all the stuff for safe-keeping. What if they go bankrupt?

Apple is offering (at least they have been spamming me last few days) $12/year for 50G of storage in iCloud, for example. For $500 that's 40 years of storage, not counting interest (for me that's forever.)

:Niranjan

I'd keep clear of anything involving third parties, you are relying on them staying in business and able to maintain the promised service.
I'd also try to avoid anything involving electronic storage. Thinking of how much computer systems and the internet has changed in only 20 years ?
Maybe the safest option would be some form of printed storage, photo film or paper ? Negatives have been proved to last 100+ years, and paper documents many hundreds of years.

FWIW, magnetic tape is still considered one of the most reliable forms of archival storage.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/why-the-future-of-data-storage-is-still-magnetic-tape#toggle-gdpr

I still have a functioning Colorado tape system although I am not using it for archiving anything. Also, I have a pretty large collection of reel-to-reel tapes, several hundred of which are on paper-backed tape, the stuff that was used prior to plastic/acetate tapes, which were recorded in the late 1940s, and these tapes play and sound just fine.

At current rates of $0.99/mo for 50 GB of storage, your $500 will buy you 42 years of Apple's iCloud service. Of course they do not claim that their rates will never change, or that iCloud will be around forever, and neither should they, because there are too many unknowns about the distant future. Should you choose this or any other cloud service, I'd consider granting other family members admin-level account access, including billing, in case something should happen to you.

And here's another thing: Forever.com states that they will invest a portion of your money into an investment fund which they hope will generate 7% annual returns, and that these proceeds will cover ongoing maintenance costs. That's assuming that they are wise stewards of your money, and that you don't care to invest that $500 yourself and keep the additional gains.

The forever.com web site is hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS), and I'd imagine that their cloud storage is too. This is not necessarily a problem (actually, it's probably a good thing in terms of infrastructure) but it does suggest that things are not always what they appear at first glance, and AWS itself is not necessarily bound by any "forever" promises made by their resellers.

4season said:

AWS itself is not necessarily bound by any "forever" promises made by their resellers.

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They don't have to be as long as the resellers that promise the "foreverness" source their services with 3rd parties in such a way that their promise is kept.

Forever, of course, is a rather long time.

koraks said:

SD cards generally use NAND memory and this type of memory isn't really suited for long-term storage. It's a complicated topic, but the gist of it is that it's pretty much unpredictable how long the data on any given SD card will last, and that the data retention will depend on environmental factors, particularly temperature. For multi-year back I would not opt for some form of flash memory. In my view, an active/online form of storage that employs redundancy and error checking/correction (e.g. RAID5) is far more sensible. This is one of the arguments for the case I made for cloud storage, since these do use these kinds of storage schemes.

Of course, one could maintain a 'farm' of flash cards/thumbsticks/etc. with a decent degree of redundancy and revive the data e.g. annually and pre-emptively replace the media periodically. In my experience, such systems that rely on our own discipline tend to fail at some point as discipline breaks down...Which is another argument for cloud storage, since it generally automatically synchronizes without manual intervention.

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History has shown lots of corporations (including some in the Fortune 1000) that suddenly announce their exit from cloud storage services, or companies that simply go out of business without transferring their customers' data to another company. Admittedly that afflicted the industry more a decade ago, but for those who fell victim to corporate failure/exit, it has left a very bitter taste for cloud services. Buyer beware, be prepared!

The longevity of SSD has been debated, for reason. But even magnetic media has its lifetime for data which is not re-written to the media from time to time. Additionally, the long term continued availability of connectivity for a given media to the PCs of the future can be questioned...if someone wrote data on an ST-506 harddrive in the late 1980's, can one even find a controller card that fits today's PC?

Perhaps the data safety solution best points to NOT a SINGLE SOLUTION, but redudancy even in media/cloud.

Yes, that's a very relevant point to make. Hence my recommendation to dual source a cloud solution.

I don't see the benefit of paying forever.com to store photos on AWS when Amazon Photos offers unlimited free photo storage to Prime members.

christislord said:

I would like to store my photos in a way for the next generation

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When you say, "the next generation", are you referring to your descendants, specifically -- or to humanity in general?

Who do you imagine will retrieve these images, and for what purpose? If it is yourself, then cloud storage can be a useful part of your total backup strategy. But how would your storage account be passed on to someone else, and what would they do with your photos?

I believe having photos printed in books is the best solution for passing photos to the next generation, especially for friends and family - and possibly for strangers, as well.
- Anyone who picks up a book can flip through it and instantly judge it's value. If someone picks up an SD card, an M-disk, or a hard drive, there is no easy way to tell what is on it -- and no way of know if it is worth the trouble to find out. Prints and slides are as easy to read as books, but books are better for keeping collections of related photos together. Negatives can be hard to read, especially color.

- Multiple copies of books can be stored in different locations to minimize the chance of loss by fire, flood or storms.

- Books are independent of rapidly changing technology and can be viewed without any additional device (as long as the sun shines).

- Books are ideal for mixing text and photos. I believe titles and captions can be invaluable for providing context for photos. While some digital photo formats can include titles / captions as metadata, software made for viewing digital photos is highly variable in the ability to display metadata.

- Books are ideal for keeping collections of related photos grouped together. Digital media tends to randomize collections of photos into lists sorted by file name or date unless you make the effort to organize the photos into folders. Also, if you do not take the trouble to create descriptive file names, the camera-created file names are not helpful to anyone trying to figure out what the photos are about. I recommend including a "read me" text document in each folder which describes what the photos in that folder are about.

On the negative side, books can be very time consuming to create and expensive to print. They are not suitable for storing huge numbers of photos, so one must be selective. Per 1000 photos, books are not as small and portable as SD cards, optical media or hard drives - but remember those digital storage media are worthless without some kind of hardware, which adds bulk and requires power.

I have made several photo books using the self-publishing service Blurb, examples <here>. By taking advantage of sales and discounts for multiple copies, your cost to have a book printed will be quite a bit lower than what is showing on that website (but still expensive). For anyone with a computer, PDF versions of the books can be downloaded for much less than the cost of a printed book.

For photo books of family and friends, I provide multiple copies -- perhaps a few will survive, and they may be of some interest to someone of the next generation? But I am pretty sure that whoever has to clean out my house when I am gone is not going to bother with trying to figure out how to access the photos on my computer, external drives, or my iCloud account, or feed my stacks of optical discs into a reader just to see what is on them.

My own first choice for cloud storage might be Proton:
https://proton.me/drive
Because in general, "free" is rarely truly free, and often, we are the actual product being sold. And while the data we share seems to be boring and unremarkable, enormous fortunes have been built upon it.

But for 50 GB of data? I dunno, that's still small enough to readily fit onto USB stick, optical M-Disc, etc. Granted that solid state storage isn't archival, which is why you keep multiple copies and periodically refresh them.

koraks said:

SD cards generally use NAND memory and this type of memory isn't really suited for long-term storage. It's a complicated topic, but the gist of it is that it's pretty much unpredictable how long the data on any given SD card will last, and that the data retention will depend on environmental factors, particularly temperature. For multi-year back I would not opt for some form of flash memory. In my view, an active/online form of storage that employs redundancy and error checking/correction (e.g. RAID5) is far more sensible. This is one of the arguments for the case I made for cloud storage, since these do use these kinds of storage schemes.

Of course, one could maintain a 'farm' of flash cards/thumbsticks/etc. with a decent degree of redundancy and revive the data e.g. annually and pre-emptively replace the media periodically. In my experience, such systems that rely on our own discipline tend to fail at some point as discipline breaks down...Which is another argument for cloud storage, since it generally automatically synchronizes without manual intervention.

Click to expand...

I've been thinking about this same topic ... long-term, stable storage solutions, and so I appreciate this thread and any advice you might provide re: RAID devices. I'm not an engineer and would therefore be looking for systems that do not involve lots of building. I recently looked into purchasing a Drobo 5-bay enclosure and then purchasing accompanying Western Digital Black (2TB) units. Problem here is I cannot find any Drobo enclosures for sale?

Based upon your response (above), you seem quite comfortable in this "space." Would you have any good Enclosure/Disk recommendations? Or, should I consider a different technology? Thank you in advance for any advice you might provide.

I initially went this route and built an inexpensive RAID data server. I do not recommend it. If you take into account the time you spend in building and maintaining this server it quickly becomes a very expensive solution. You will have to regularly replace the hard-drives (normally every five years), update and upgrade your operating system. The hardware will become obsolete fairly quickly and you will have to rebuild your system or buy a new one. So basically, you will be running a tiny data centre. Are you going to run it 24/7? Will power interruptions affect your server? Will it be remotely accessible? Do you need to worry about cyber security? And then there are fires, floods, governments and wars.

Instead, I bought several external hard-drives (magnetic and SSD) and syncronise my data between them. They are inexpensive and easily replaceable. It is a good idea to store the disks at different locations.

As others said, cloud storage is the answer. If you are really serious about your data you should use multiple platforms, like AWS (USA) and Tencent (China).

This is an interesting problem. Many digital media archives and museums are looking for a solution but I don't know if it has been found yet.

Thank you for your quick and helpful response. I am currently doing something very similar to what you recommended. I might try "upgrading" my external disks as they are pretty old. I am running on an iMac (desktop, Retina, 27in, early 2018), OS 12.7. I don't know if this is OS-specfic or a result of the disks I'm using, but this machine regularly experiences shutdown-stalls as it appears to take some time for the attached disks to stabilize before committing the shutdown ... but, again, I could be wrong.

That said, thank you for taking the time and saving me some time, money, and aggravation.

Chances are no one cares about your photo hobby now and will care less after you're dead. 'Remember Charlie, a real photo bug." and then they'll down another beer.

Make prints of the important pictures, probably the family ones. Give them to your family as hard copies for wall mounting or for standing on their furniture. Make photo zines also for your family. I've made video slide shows and given them to them on memory cards to watch on their computers or smart TVs. SO they're already back up in their homes on their walls. This way they all get to enjoy your photos now, the ones they're really interested in, and will keep the photos and books after you're gone. The rest of your snaps, no one will care about.

Alan Edward Klein said:

Chances are no one cares about your photo hobby now and will care less after you're dead. 'Remember Charlie, a real photo bug." and then they'll down another beer.

Click to expand...

It’s surprising who, over the years “cares” about one’s hobby as a “photo bug.”

While wondering what ever happened to the missile site I was assigned to in the early, mid-‘70s when I was in the army in Europe, I stumbled upon an online group about that specific unit. I was definitely a “photo bug” then and have MANY photos shot around the barracks, the base, (never of the site itself due to security), and pretty good coverage of our trip to Crete when the unit went there to fire a live missile. I posted lots of these images to the group and many of the guys (it was all guys back then) were pretty happy about it and were able to put names to faces including their own. I also had quite a few images of a warrant officer who befriended me, had me over for meals, and out with his family on the the town (Wiesbaden.). He responded to me in a direct email and we had a few exchanges and then his daughter posted that he had just passed away and was grateful for all the photos and memories.

So, you never know who, after many years, might care about one’s photos.

Hi-

When you look at how many tech/web companies from 10 years ago are still around today, anyplace calling itself “forever” is delusional. And $500 for 25GB of storage is just crazy. I work in television, and the archival medium of choice is still LTO, tape, believe it or not. Apparently it has a shelf life of 30 years, which is about as archival as it gets in the digital world.

I deal with terabytes of media every day, and everything gets backed up to at least 2 separate hard drives (in addition to the main working drives), stored in different locations. And for anything I know I’ll want later down the road, it gets duped again to fresh drives every few years. For only 50gb of data, archiving to multiple drives (and even cloud storage) isn’t that big of a deal. They’re all going to fail or disappear at some point, so redundancy is the way to go. I vote for books!

There are no archival digital storage options today. So make copies of every photograph you want to keep in multiple formats [jpeg, raw, ... et al] on many different platforms [usb stick, CDs., DVDs, tape, et al] and store in multiple places. One of the biggest enemies is formats migrating and if every photograph is not migrated, the photograph can be lost. An example of that is the pre lunar landings survey photographs were almost lost because they were stored on computer tapes and the only computers and tape machines that could read them were almost all destroyed before a small group of people save them and migrated them to multiple platforms in multiple formats.