Is AFF the best choice for digital preservationists who create images?

Question

It seems that AFF is the defacto standard for digital preservationists who create images. Is this true, and is it shifting?

In particular, does or will the depreciation of AFF3 and the discontinuation of maintenance for AFFLIB have any impact on this community?

Answer 1

Despite AFF's popularity, it is no longer being actively developed by Simson Garfinkle, its original creator. In fact, the current version of Guymager no longer has AFF disk image support enabled by default. From the Guymager wiki, "Simson Garfinkel, the inventor of the AFF format, recommends not to use his AFF format any longer. He sees no need in continuing with AFF and maintaining related libs and tools since EWF became so nicely documented thanks to Joachim Metz."

To answer your question, then, I would recommend using Expert Witness Format (.E01) forensic disk image formats for digital preservation.

Comments

I had thought of answering this question in a very similar way after the BitCurator workshop taught by, err, @PorterOlsen :)

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Thank you for this response. This was what I had found through my own research, but the last time I had heard anyone talking about the issue from a preservation perspective, I was pretty sure they were advocating AFF because it was "open".