Last week a bride from 2006 emailed me that her parent’s house had burned down. Fortunately, no one was hurt in the blaze, but her wedding images were stored there and were destroyed.
The good news was that I still had her images in my archives, and was able to send her a replacement disk.
But there are important lessons to be learned here…
1) Always keep backup copies of your images in at least two different locations. I supply two copies for all of my weddings, so make sure one of these gets stored elsewhere. I encourage couples to make additional copies as well, just in case.
2) Recordable DVDs do not last forever. Though experts estimate a lifespan of 20 – 100 years, this is based on the media being stored in perfect and stable archival conditions, which is likely not going to be the case for most of us. I suggest copying the images to fresh media once every year or two. Currently Sony and TDK recordable DVDs are rated among the best in terms of quality.
3) Even if your DVD does last a long time, media does eventually become obsolete. 25 years ago, 5.25″ floppy disks dominated the computer storage market. Today, it would be a struggle to find a computer equipped with a drive able to read these disks (and as a fascinating side note, it would take THREE of those disks to store just ONE of your wedding images… a stack of about 1,800 disks would be required for a complete wedding). So, over the years, you will want to migrate your images to new types of media as they become available.
