Sage advice Shooshie, and something we would all be wise to look at and plan for.Shooshie wrote:bayswater wrote:But the fact remains, there is no archive of all that I put into them. No bringing that back. I like Dropbox, now, but I'm not getting married to it. It's just a passing tool, as are all the other things in my Mac. But my work... it has to survive all those changes, and that's something I do feel concern about.
I have been a writer all my life, and I wrote countless essays, stories, and even correspondence in MS Word from the 1980s through the 1990s. At some point, all those files quit working. I was able to get most of that content out with a utility called Juice, but it's not a perfect way to do it. Formatting and random gibberish end up in there, and you have to go through it with a fine-toothed comb to remove it. I still have hundreds, if not thousands, of such files that never have been extracted. Probably never will. That's lost work. I've learned to keep things simple. Keep text files. Keep jpegs. Keep MIDI files. Audio files. At least things can be reconstructed if need be.
That's something that really is making me think more about open source alternatives where feasible. Adobe CC is the worst offender in this area with it's requirement that you keep signing up for subscriptions or else your app will stop working completely (not to mention the rapid upgrade process). What happens in five years when you find your Photoshop or AE CC 2020 version cannot open files you created on a CS version of the app? What happens if you lose you job or the next recession comes, and you have to cut costs? If it comes down to cancelling your electricity or cancelling your CC subscription, you know which one is going to go. Say bye-bye to the ability to access all your files during your down time.
Wow, terrible. If you have Linux you can use Dia or Lucidchart can work as 