How To Protect Your Photos From Bit Rot?

Bit Rot, what’s that? For those who have never messed with it before, it may sound like a destruction program designed by aliens to drive food shortage on Earth. Seriously! When I heard it first I was trying to recall whether it’s from the 1968 science fiction, 2001:Space Odyssey or some upcoming Christopher Nolan movie.

I wish it were, but it’s just another data corruption term that I want my readers to be aware of and take measures to avoid it. Bit Rot is the most serious kind of data corruption scenario that can happen to a storage device, so whether or not it’s a food destruction program, it can destroy your files stored in SSDs, CDs, DVDs, or memory chips. This blog will discuss in detail Bit Rot and ways to protect your Photos from Bit Rot.

What is Bit Rot?

Bit Rot is a slow and silent destruction that corrupts your storage drives and the data stored in them. The data stored in your external storage becomes unreadable because of the physical deterioration of the storage device. Hence, if a storage media is suffering from Bit Rot the data stored in it may not be useful at all.

Which devices are prone to Bit Rot?

All the devices that you use to store digital files are prone to BitRot. Bit Rot is also called Digital Rot. Digital Decay, or Data Rot. This problem can affect the following devices over some time:

SSDs
HDDs
Memory Cards
Pen Drive
Flash Drives
CD-ROM
CD/DVD
Digital Tapes
Magnetic Tapes

While newer storage devices may take a bit longer because of their design to accumulate this corruption, older means of digital storage devices such as digital tapes, CD-ROM and CD/DVD can get affected with this issue earlier because of their design and material.

So for instance if you have backed up data in a SSD drive and the same in your DVD and left it for 2 – 3 years without use. Then due to digital rot or Bit Rot, you may not be able to access all the files in your DVD, while files stored in your SSD may be accessible until the next few years.

How does a storage drive become prone to Bit Rot?

The answer is Time, this happens when any data is stored in a storage media for longer without use. So for instance, if you have archived your files in a storage media for say 10 years and now you are not able to access it then the storage device is suffering from Bit Rot. However, the impact of deterioration may vary with the conditions. While a small deterioration will make a small portion of the data inaccessible, a high-intensity deterioration can make all the files inaccessible and corrupt.

All the storage devices around us, be it Magnetic Tapes, CDs, SSDs, etc are prone to environmental damage and chemical reactions because of their chemical composition. So if proper storage conditions are not met the data drives start becoming corrupt and this is called Bit Rot. This happens because of the exposure of the storage media to moisture, heat, or a high-intensity magnetic field. Hence if the storage media gets damaged the data stored in it will become inaccessible.

How to protect your data from Bit Rot?

Proper data management and regular backup are the only solutions to Bit Rot. Hence if you are a researcher, owner of any kind of data archives, or any business or individual who stores large amounts of data, make sure that your storage drives are kept in favorable conditions away from any kind of magnetic field, moisture, or heat.

Also, try to regularly access your data stored in your storage drives, this will help you check if you can access your files or not. This will help you determine the extent of damage to your storage drives. For instance, if you are unable to access some of your files you must take immediate action and backup those files to a safer storage drive.

Cloud backups are an option for storing small amounts of data, but if you have larger data sets and heavy files then it may get expensive. Hence, you may only upload your necessary files to cloud backup.

How to protect your photos from Bit Rot?

My friend David stored all his marriage ceremony videos and photos in a hard disk drive. He left it in his cupboard for around 5 years without use. In the years he never thought of checking any of the files stored in it but last month on his 5th Marriage Anniversary he tried to access the files he was left devastated. Many of his photos were inaccessible and corrupt.

Luckily, I knew an easy solution to this devastating issue, and we were able to get back those corrupt photos, because of minimal Bit Rot. David was able to access and recover most of his high-quality photos with the help of a photo repair software, called Stellar Repair for Photo.

This software is very much capable of fixing images under the situations of corrupt header, corrupt data, invalid image file structure, unknown or invalid marker, missing SOS marker etc. You can repair inaccessible, greyed-out, pixelated, fuzzy, stretched, tinted, faded, grainy, blurry images or those showing errors as well.

However, he learned a lesson, a very hard way, and hence decided to regularly back up all his archived photos and files to a secure and safe external hard drive.

End Notes

Bit Rot is a time-consuming process and is a slow degradation of storage drives which makes your files inaccessible stored in them. If you store your storage drive in a favorable temperature and atmosphere away from any kind of magnetic field, your drives will not be prone to any kind of physical or chemical damage. Hence you will be able to access your files easily. However, it is still recommended to run periodic checks of all your external storage drives and identify this issue.