Archiving photos for long term storage from a digital camera

[Marquoz]

I had an interesting conversation with my father over the weekend because he purchased a new digital camera, and figured out a problem. Basicly how do you store photos from a digital camera for 20-30 years? Burning it to a CD isn't exactly viable because I know they degrade over time because of the burning process. Also storing on a hard drive isn't exactly 100% safe either because hard drives do crash. Storing on an external drive that is rarely used seems to be a safe solution at first glance, but then you have the issue of constantly moving it over 20-30 years and the chance of it being lost/damaged irreperably. Pen drives are out of the question because of the limit on read write before they burn out. RAID arrays have a fatal flaw as the controller can fail. The thought of storing it online was mentioned, but can you guarantee the company will be there 20 years down the line?

Is printing them out still the best way for long term archival solution? Or am I missing something with the changes in technology?

[groovyone]

I have mine on 3 HDDs and DVD. As for long term, that is the main reason for the multiple HDDs.

[Rob71]

For pictures I want to keep, I cover all bases. I store them on a HDD, burn them to DVD, use online storage and print out copies and archive them. Plus most of my important family pictures have all been shared, so they all have their various solutions also.

[Anthony P]

cards have become cheap enough that now I have one set on the PC, one on an external HDD and one on the card and I buy a new one when it is done.

[york weir]

I have a script that runs every night on my PC copying files from one internal harddrive to another. That same script then copies those files to an external harddrive. Lastly, if my iPod is plugged up the script will then copy the files to my ipod.

[mikejet]

I back them up to DVD. As long as you store them properly it should be fine.