I dont think they will ever be lost. There will always be a converter program for the next generation photographic medium. I have started to scan in my old 35mm film to the computer. I can now give slide shows on the TV. All photos are now backed up on three hard drives and memory sticks for safety.They will never fade in digital format.

The older music systems are now converted to digital, so can be played on modern systems. I have a program that will convert CD music into ipod, mp3 and a few more file systems. You can even convert your old vynil and tape music to any of the newer file formats. The same will happen with photo files.

Hi Peg. Memory sticks have come down so much in price and the size has gone up drasticaly lately. You can now get 32 Gigabite sticks for less than I paid for 4 Gig sticks that I got 2 years ago. Even Re-writeable Discs fade after about 2 years, Write once read many last a lot longer,but they dont last indefinately. As long as the sticks are not subjected to high magnetic fields or high voltages,they will last almost forever. I have stopped using discs for storage,only for transporting photos for friends.

Jason, I think we will have another ice age before we blow ourselves up. Just think, in ten thousand years time,if there is anybody about then and can work out how to use our digital recordings,they may just be able to avoid doing the same as us. Then again, they may be a troup of monkeys from africa. Lol

yes I agree with everyone but I know what you mean Toby. I still have albums to look back on from the days I took photos with my Pentax K1000 but now I only print out some of the photos and although I have a great printer I don't tend to print as many out as I used to because of storage. I do lots of back ups but it isn't the same as those photo albums! Mind you I suppose if there was a fire, god forbid, the albums would be gone but some of my photos would be safe on backups and of course here on POE!

My Grandad was an avid photographer before the Second World War and my family gave me all his processing equipment to keep because they know I have followed in his footsteps in so many ways. My Mom has his photos in albums and they are amazing to see.

I have for the the last 16 years been taking digital images

And working on the development for the last 9 years of what we now have

in place of what we older folk called a Jukebox.

I was in Japan when the CD revolution took off and even then everyone know it was only going to be a small life span that the CD was going to have.

But my point is if you want to make you digital software as safe as you can the most effective way of doing it at a cost the average person can afford is by making sets of DVDs .

By sets I mean you make your first DVD say its got 500 images on it

then  you make two copy's of that DVD that gives you a set of three 

the reason for three is simple after working with this media for the last 20+ years I know from my own experience even the best discs will fail at some time so you need to have at least two copy;s

This is the most effective way of doing it

You will get boy geeks saying use hard drives or even solid state drives but the same applies you need to have backups to because the drives will fail at some time to

Hope this is of some help