Orphaned files

In pilot circles the most instructive flying stories start with the phrase: “Don’t do what I did.”

Unfortunately, I don’t have any flying yarns to share today. My concerns are more earthly and less glamorous. That’s because my nose is buried in my computer as I try to get better organized. But if you’re still looking for an instructive tale, I do have one to share, so read on.

Getting ready for the new year is harder than it used to be. In days of old it just entailed weeding out files, updating the family photo album, and emptying out the ashtray in the foyer.

Outside of mistakenly throwing out a file, there wasn’t too much you could do to screw up the process. After all, a paper file is a paper file, and a photo is a photo. They can’t break, and they don’t require any technology to access.

But these days our files are electronic. And, as such, they are entirely dependent on complicated technology that is changing by the day. Like it or not, the average slob like me has to become a kitchen table digital archivist. As for the pros, they toss around ominous terms like “data rot,” “mean time between failures,” and “orphan files.”

Yikes, that’s a weighty array of worries, and today I’m going to focus on the last item, the orphan files. These are files that you can’t use because the software that reads them is no longer used.

I fell into this trap a long time ago. I bought a scanner so I could digitize my documents, publications, and photos. The scanner came with a slick program that made the process convenient.

Well, so far, so good.

But taking the slick path turned out to be a slippery slope, as my files were created, and saved, and, hence, archived, in the program’s proprietary format.

I wasn’t entirely oblivious to the situation. I knew that once my archiving project was done I should convert the image files into more common, non-proprietary, formats.

But these kind of projects are never “done.” They just asymptotically approach completion since there is always (always!) just a “little more” something that needs to be messed with. It’s like trying to slice an orange in half so many times that it disappears entirely; a nice idea, but an impossible one.

And so the magic day never came where I could declare the project complete and therefore commit to spending an afternoon converting the file formats. I eventually turned my attention to other matters, and forgot all about it, hoping that the computer gods would somehow take mercy on my negligence.

But they didn’t, of course. After a few years went by I found myself having to retrieve some of my digital files. By this point the slick software I had used (it came free with the old scanner) was about as common as snowballs in Garapan. Bottom line: I couldn’t read the files I needed.

This was a rude awakening. But it came just in time for corrective action. I managed to hunt down a version of the old program, which, from the looks of things (and the price I paid) was the very last copy on the face of the planet.

Problem solved, right? Well, not so fast. Though my “orphan” files were now reunited with their dusty old “legacy” program, this program had to cooperate with a new operating system. I was almost stymied by this obstacle.

I eventually got things working. And I eventually converted my image files into more common formats, but a total data disaster was too close for comfort.

So, don’t do what I did. Don’t get married to a file format that might leave you crying at the altar when the big day comes.

As for image files, two formats that seem good candidates for survival are JPEG and TIFF. Just so I can sound smarter than I really am, I’ll note that JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, and TIFF is Tagged Image File Format. No, this verbiage doesn’t really explain anything, but it beats being faced with seemingly arbitrary abbreviations.

Image files seem like easy territory compared to other files that we have to deal with, such as word processing documents and spreadsheets. Archiving that fare for long-term posterity seems like a difficult proposition. But that stuff is a topic for a different day.

The bigger topic, of course, is the fragility of digital data. That’s not just an issue for geeks, it’s an issue for everyone. For example, every so often we hear horror stories about people who have lost all their photos because of a hard drive crash or a computer virus.

So, don’t do what they did. And don’t do what I did. But do pass the ashtray, please; I’m tidying up around here and it’s the only thing I can do right.

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