How do I leave my digital media to my wife and kids?

[Clix Pix]

I keep putting it off and putting it off, and at my age that is not a good thing. I need to get things clearly spelled out and written down so that whenever something does happen to me the family isn’t floundering, wondering what to do and where to start, etc. My old will would be the one right now still in effect, and it’s way, way out of date. Definitely need to do something about this......

 

[Apple fanboy]

I keep putting it off and putting it off, and at my age that is not a good thing. I need to get things clearly spelled out and written down so that whenever something does happen to me the family isn’t floundering, wondering what to do and where to start, etc. My old will would be the one right now still in effect, and it’s way, way out of date. Definitely need to do something about this......

Agreed.

 

[EugW]

Hmmm... iCloud went down today, scaring a whole bunch of people...

iCloud Down for Many Users, Causing 'The Application You Have Selected Does Not Exist' Error [Update: Fixed]

iCloud appears to be down for many people at the current time, based on complaints from MacRumors readers and Twitter users. Apple's system...

www.macrumors.com

Yarp. One other thing about HD back up. Will the computers 10 years from now be able connect to those HD? You'll need to place a working computer in the vault so they can access those HD 10, 20, or 50 years from now. I've got several crates full of 5.25 and 3.5 floppies that I can no longer access because technology marches on. I've got a box full of Zip disks and I kept the Zip drive. But it's a FireWire Zip drive.

If not for my keeping my ancient VHS player in around, I'd have a bunch of tapes I wouldn't be able to watch.

My NAS includes files that were transferred over from my floppies and Zip drives and CDs and DVDs over the years. I bought a Blu-ray burner as well, but ended up not using it much, since 25 GB isn't that much more helpful vs 7 GB, and since most computers couldn't accept the discs anyway. BTW, CDs and DVDs don't fit in my safety deposit box, but 3.5" hard drives do. I have a USB 3 SATA dock for my iMac, but since it's USB, it works with my other Macs as well.

I figure it will be easy to read SATA drives for quite some time, but some of my backups are USB drives as well. Also, I still have a couple of working Firewire Macs, but I don't use my Firewire drives anymore.

Now that I mention it, being the nerd that I am, I have full bootable clean installs on a couple of external drives of every version of OS X from about 10.3 to 10.10, as well as installer dmg files for 10.8 and later. (I have installer discs and update files for older versions.). It makes dealing with old Macs that much easier. I won't bother leaving these to the wife and kids though.

 

[HDFan]

One other thing about HD back up.

I figure it will be easy to read SATA drives for quite some time,

Larry Jordan reports that hard disk recorded signals, over time, fade. They need to be periodically refreshed. Over long periods of time lubricants may dry up, causing heads to seize.

 

[Tech198]

Larry Jordan reports that hard disk recorded signals, over time, fade. They need to be periodically refreshed. Over long periods of time lubricants may dry up, causing heads to seize.

Seems the sooner we get away from spinning HD's over to Solid state, the better

 

[lostom]

Just my small input, would a NAS and offsite backup make sense?
I know that's not accounting for your DRM stuff, but who know's where that will end up, we don't really own it after all.

It's a great thread and I'm genuinely interested in it, because it certainly applies to me.

Looking forward to this developing.

 

[HDFan]

Seems the sooner we get away from spinning HD's over to Solid state, the better

"SSDs simply shouldn’t be relied upon for long-term storage."

Death and the unplugged SSD: How much you really need to worry about data retention

Unless you live in Death Valley with no AC, your data will not disappear from your SSD in a few days. And likely not even then.

www.pcworld.com

Why are solid-state drive (SSD) not suited for archival purposes?

Answer (1 of 25): SSDs store information as electrical charges in floating gate transistors. There’s a tiny, tiny bit of electrically conductive material (and when I say tiny I mean smaller than the wavelength of visible light—we’re talking so small you can count the atoms that make it) surrounde...

www.quora.com

"Anyways, the prior answers are accurate-ish: solid-state storage (that based on NAND) loses charge over time. So throwing something on a thumb-drive and forgetting about it is basically rolling the dice. Sometimes you’ll win, sometimes you wont. To be fair, this is a problem on most media. Those data retention lifetimes you see are often optimistic and based on accelerated lifetime tests assuming a well controlled environment. e.g. kept in a low-humidity, temperature controlled environment with a stable power supply, minimal vibration, no human intervention."

"The only way to keep data safe (and there is no foolproof system) is to have a combination of multiple copies* and a process to periodically verify they’re valid."
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Just my small input, would a NAS and offsite backup make sense?

Generally a 3-3-3 or 3-2-3 backup plan is recommended. 3 backups in 3 different media types in 3 different locations is the 3-3-3 plan.

 

[dkddkd]

M-DISC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC) is an answer to the question of storage longevity ... I have an LG Blu-ray (https://www.lg.com/us/burners-drives/lg-BE16NU50-external-blu-ray-dvd-drive) with BDXL (100GB) support ...

 

[lostom]

"SSDs simply shouldn’t be relied upon for long-term storage."

Death and the unplugged SSD: How much you really need to worry about data retention

Unless you live in Death Valley with no AC, your data will not disappear from your SSD in a few days. And likely not even then.

www.pcworld.com

Why are solid-state drive (SSD) not suited for archival purposes?

Answer (1 of 25): SSDs store information as electrical charges in floating gate transistors. There’s a tiny, tiny bit of electrically conductive material (and when I say tiny I mean smaller than the wavelength of visible light—we’re talking so small you can count the atoms that make it) surrounde...

www.quora.com

"Anyways, the prior answers are accurate-ish: solid-state storage (that based on NAND) loses charge over time. So throwing something on a thumb-drive and forgetting about it is basically rolling the dice. Sometimes you’ll win, sometimes you wont. To be fair, this is a problem on most media. Those data retention lifetimes you see are often optimistic and based on accelerated lifetime tests assuming a well controlled environment. e.g. kept in a low-humidity, temperature controlled environment with a stable power supply, minimal vibration, no human intervention."

"The only way to keep data safe (and there is no foolproof system) is to have a combination of multiple copies* and a process to periodically verify they’re valid."
[automerge]1591173692[/automerge]


Generally a 3-3-3 or 3-2-3 backup plan is recommended. 3 backups in 3 different media types in 3 different locations is the 3-3-3 plan.

That's a lot of work and probably a lot money, but it makes sense, so it's always going to depend on the lengths each individual is willing to go to, how important it is to them.

I agree with you though, that's the best way to do it, unfortunately, probably not realistic for most.

 

[Lasrjock]

I figure it will be easy to read SATA drives for quite some time, but some of my backups are USB drives as well. Also, I still have a couple of working Firewire Macs, but I don't use my Firewire drives anymore.

Technically, your Firewire drives are probably SATA (or even PATA) drives attached to a Firewire interface. As a tinkerer, I would open the box, see what they are, and make sure that I have an adapter. I still have a PATA to USB adapter to read older drives (Diety help me if it SCSI).