The Digital Dark Age.
The longevity of digital photos is not guaranteed..
We face two main threats to images which exist only as digital files.
As technology evolves, the hardware and software that we use becomes obsolete, superseded or replaced
No medium for digital data storage will last forever, letalone 20 years
If we don’t act now we risk losing all the data we’ve created in the 21st century.
And it’s already begun…
Digital data is stored on hard drives, including in server farms that sit behind-the-scenes of the cloud services. This data needs to be managed. Knowing that hard drives have a lifespan of only a few years, we need to know how long we have been using each device for, what is on it exactly and then carefully migrate that data to a new device at an appropriate time. All this management costs money and resources.
Especially for big companies like Apple and Google who are storing almost 10 trillion photos with trillions and trillions more being created each and every year. The rooms that house the servers need to be carefully temperature controlled. And 90% of the data stored in the world’s servers is junk.
Google’s Policy Change
In December 2020, Google finally had enough of being the digital wasteland of the world. And it announced a policy change. It states,
“Effective from June 1, 2021, if you are inactive for 2 years in Gmail, Drive or Photos, we may delete the content in the products in which you’re inactive.”
In other words, from June 1 2023, Google is going to start deleting data from accounts that have been inactive for two years.
Watch Carly’s latest webinar to learn more about Google’s Policy Change & the steps you can take to protect your photos from becoming lost forever.
If you are worried about the future of your digital photos, book a free chat with Carly from PhotoGenie to discuss your situation.