Comment by ThinkBeat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ThinkBeat | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I have paperbacks over 100 years old that are still easily readable. It is in the shelf. Before that it was on my grandfathers shelf. The transformation was quite easy. Shelf ot Shelf.

Somewhere on an Amazon server I have a couple of thousand Kindle eBooks. How long will Kindle device be around and useable? They may disappear at any moment really.

I have also bought book and publications in other formats. PDFs, Word docs, plain text, epub, etc.

If I die tomorrow, and someone was interested in my literarily habits, they could go to my shelf and find that paperback, put it in their pocket and put it on their own bookshelf.

My Kindle books will be unseeable and untouchable. (ands this might happen before I kick the bucket and I won't be able ot read them either. already a couple of books and publications are missing

All my computer file books on a cloud somewhere or some harddisk will be invisible as well.

If someone took an interest in my laptop to look at my digital bookshelf. of non-Kindle files.

Well, it is a MacBook and strongly encrypted from what I understand. I dont think a future interested person will have an easy time looking at my shelf.

Perhaps I should start gluing thumb drives to my bookshelf at regular intervals. How kong will usb thumb drives be around? How long do they last?

I have a nice collection of floppy disks, computer cassettes (with programs), ZX Microdrive disks, Iomega zip drives, and a stack of backup streamer tapes of different formats/sizes. I have no idea what system they used and what it would take to read even one of them,

I also have some movies in "HD DVD" format and a laserdisc or two. Not to mention a large assortments of memory cards for cameras that mostly contain RAW formats of long forgotten cameras.

All these data storage ideas were sensible at the time. A thumb drive is sensible now. I have no idea for how long it will be.

There are still USB floppy disk drives out there. They work fine in Windows and Linux. They'll even work with USB-OTG on Android.

There's a listing on eBay right now for a USB 750MB Zip Drive. I imagine you could get it working in Windows and Linux without much trouble.

I've got a monitor that supports something like a dozen different memory cards. Memory card readers are incredibly cheap.

All those digital mediums are not lost, and all of those digital files can be transferred to more current storage mediums without any loss in resolution.

You're right that storing important files on your MacBook isn't a good archival strategy. It is a recipe for certain disaster. Its essentially storing your books loosely in the trunk of your car along with your gym bag and every now and then an open case of beer. It's not the place to store things long term, just a place to put things while you're working on them. If your logicboard dies, it'll take the storage with it.

Have you tried to read a 5 volt smartmedia card recently? I came across a few 2 megabyte 5v cards when going through my Dad's stuff a few years back. I stuck them on EBay because it was better than just throwing them away, and was astonished when they fetched £30 a pop. I can only imagine they're used by some classic synth gear or something like that.

I have not recently but I think the card reader attached to my monitor supports the 5V cards. I don't think I've touched a smartmedia card since 2003.

They were really popular back in the day though. They seemed so futuristic, this ultra thin plastic chip seemingly storing your data on these etched gold patterns. It definitely seemed like something out of science fiction. SD cards are so plain in aesthetic comparison.

You overestimate how much people will care about your bookshelf after you die. Usually most of such book collections like that get sold for cheap or tossed out. Yes, a few interesting ones may be kept. But books are dime a dozen, the point is to read them, not to keep them around indefinitely.

Another problem is the ease of reading. When there's a book on my shelf, anyone visiting can take a look and dive into the book. Or my kids could wet their feet in different topics, something which is not possible with digital formats.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com