How will we store family videos long-term?

[Justjoinedforthis]

Hi All, I have been thinking about how old videos will be passed on to future generations. Surely the Cloud risks people dying without passing on their passwords and they would be lost. No new devices seem to have DVD players (I am talking about the next hundred years or so).

Do people think it's a case of saving the digital files on a USB stick, and then the file type will have to be updated as the programs become obsolete?

Maybe a bit of a boring thread but it's really been on my mind!

Not boring at all! I think that it will be a case of keeping on top of the technology and transferring data (films, photos etc) to whatever the new thing is over time but also that companies will do this as part of the service they offer you. So whoever you have your phone etc with will have services which look after all of this for you (for a fee) and ask you all the right questions at sign up about how you want information stored, what happens to it in the event of your death, who else can access it etc.

I think it will become more common for information on passwords and ‘digital memories’ to be included in wills. There have already been some court cases where families have fought to be given access to Facebook accounts etc where someone has died without leaving their account details behind.

I’ve got to be honest, I don’t really understand ‘the cloud’ but we have a hard drive thing which is plugged directly into our WiFi box. It’s got an app which we all have on our phones which we can use periodically to transfer photos, films etc and you choose whether it goes into ‘family’ folders which everyone can access or your personal folder. Apparently it’s all backed up in the cloud too but it means there’s a physical thing with everything on it. My DH says that if the house went on fire so long as us and the cats were out that’s what he would save!

In wills now it is sensible to make provision for digital items as otherwise Apple won't release them and you are dependent on knowing passwords etc

That's a very good point.

I currently use Facebook as my photo and video storage. I dont really use it as a social media platform, I have 30 friends on there but they are all unfollowed, so I dont get a newsfeed with people's posts.

I then upload all videos and photos (of DS) into a folder with his name and mark them as private only for me to see.

Facebook has unlimited free storage but it's certainly not a long term solution, in 30 years Facebook might not be around and how I would get them back off it again I don't know. 🤔

Yes it’s a good point. My family have ‘lost’ all the videos over the years as they are on video cassettes stuck up in my elderly parents’ loft and no one is allowed to go up and get them.

That's really interesting about wills, I'd not thought of that! I wonder if social media accounts will ever move into the public domain as historical records, or if they will just disappear

MrsTumble please be careful with Facebook - I was kicked off facebook last year for mysterious and unspecified "community guideline violations" and no amount of appeals and pleading would get my account back. Almost 16 years of photos and videos gone, they say you can download your data but it never worked. Luckily I had almost all of my own backed up on icloud, but things that other people had uploaded and tagged me in were lost to me (not to them, but I no longer have access to them or in some cases any way to contact them any more).

I use icloud at the moment and everything's on my iMac hard drive as well. I think about it often and worry I will lose everything.

I store everything onto an external hard drive. It's better than have a hundred usb sticks floating around. And they should remain accessible, or easy to transfer when technology moves ahead.