Re: [PAF] Multimedia files organization

[Cheryl Singhal <csinghal@CapAccess.org>]

Sorry, I don't know what happened last time 
 

On Wed, 28 Feb 1973, Cheryl Singhal wrote:
> 
> The voice of VERY bitter experience speaks here:  Do not EVER under ANY 
> circumstances have two files with the same name on the same (a) floppy (b) 
> tape (c) ZIP (d) physical hard drive or (e) CD.  I don't care how 
> carefully constructed your directory structure is, or how many virtual 
> partitions on the physical drive, sooner or later, something will go 
> wrong and mom2.tiff from C:\paf5\data\Smith\images\ will try to 
> cross-breed with mom2.tiff from d:\images\Westkov\Summer99\  Or the 
> computer in its infinite wisdom will arbitrarily decide these are the 
> same files and dele one of 'em.
> 
> That said, and dropping in to visit the unparanoid world (g),  you'll 
> find that an image of a birth certificate large enough and at high enough 
> res to be legible scarfs up incredible amts of space in the "best" 
> format. Even in the lossy jpeg format, you can fill a 10G HD in a week or so.
> Additionally, there's the tech issue of longevity and data migration ... 
> paper copies haven't changed much in the past 40 years; digital copies 
> have changed in the past 40 days, certainly during the past 40 wks at the 
> consumer level.  So unless you'll willing to spend a significant chunk of 
> your time over the course of a year moving images from this format to 
> that, or this media to that, you will one day in the not too distant 
> future wake up to discover that there's only one place in the state where 
> you can convert a .pxl file to a .gif and they're charging $20 per file 
> -- but no, we can't handle a CDR we need it on (insert media here), and 
> the Other Company on the other side of the state can copy your CDR onto 
> (other media) for only $15 a CD.
> 
> Or your HD has a head crash.  Before you commit too much to your HD, 
> price data-recovery for it.  As a starting point, a few yrs ago our son's 
> 2.1G HD was just shy of the biggest one on the market; he had a head 
> crash; LOW estimate was $1500 even if the disc proved unrecoverable.  
> Mind, now that's the only (knock wood!) head crash we've had on any of 
> our computers since 1986, but it's still a lot of money.
> 
> I like hard copy. (g)
> 
> Cheryl
> 
>