
Making digital documents last for ever therefore involves two processes.
#How big is photos library mac good for portable
jpg/jpeg picture file format developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group may well last “for ever” despite efforts to replace it with JPEG 2000, PNG (Portable Network Graphics), SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), SPIFF (Still Picture Interchange File Format), BPG (Better Portable Graphics), FLIF (Free Lossless Image Format), HEIF (High Efficiency Image Format, aka HEIC in Apple’s iOS 11), and Google’s WebP, among others. Operating systems, software and file formats also keep changing, so being able to see a file doesn’t mean you can load it. The photos might be safe but I won’t know unless I buy something that can read them. I still have data on 8in, 5.25in and 3.5in floppy disks, Iomega Zip disks and quarter-inch tapes. To be really safe, you should have more than one copy of each photo, stored in more than one way in more than one place.ĭigital data is a particular problem because storage formats change all the time. Fires, floods and earthquakes can also destroy digital records. People lose their most important photos every day when hard drives fail, when smartphones and laptops are stolen, when online services shut down, and when natural disasters strike.

Nothing lasts for ever, and digital images can disappear in seconds.

Is this not enough to ensure the safety and availability of my pics for ever? Arunima Yesterday, I transferred them to an external hard drive and emptied Photos. I have an Apple iMac and until now all my pictures were stored in Photos. I read your article from June 2016 on What’s the best way to organise and store my digital photos? Is it not sufficient to save my pictures on one external hard drive? Must I save them on two? Also, for how many years will an external hard drive keep the pictures safe?
