The race to save our online lives from a digital dark age
technologyreview.com
technologyreview.com
I used to use Linux on the desktop and periodically lost things that were saved to it. A lot of early photos are lost due to that.
I had a web page about my daughter starting when she was born in January 1998 and my employer, who I left, promised it would "always" be preserved. They deleted it about a year or two later and I wish I could somehow get it back.
The premise of the article basically is that, because you certainly cannot trust cloud companies to keep your data.
It used to be your only real guarantee of them keeping your data is the fact that exponentially growing storage solutions would make your previous data a pittance compared to newer storage solution capacity.
But I think that's going to come to an end, much like the inevitable end of die shrinks.
If you're technically inclined it's pretty easy and cheaper than ever to have your own durable local backups. But even so it's work.
Moreover, with the amount of intrusive data mining going on, it would be better for all of our privacy if our content just expired regularly.
I remember reading some decluttering book and "I might need it" is the phrase that indicates something should go.
That said, a TB hard disk in a closet isn't too much of a burden and https://www.jwz.org/doc/backups.html
I am 100% sure I won't look at those again for at least another couple of years, but there is so many fond memories there I have made a few copies and plan to 'maintain' those indefinitely.