Photo Credit - Flickr, Fanch The System

One of my friends recently sent me an email, “My hard drive crashed and I lost all my photos. Can you send me any pictures you have of the gang?”

A little while back, I described how to organize your digital photos. Organizing your photos is just as important as backing them up. You can’t effectively back up your photos if you don’t have them organized.

Backups Are More Feasible Than Ever

But why do so few people do it? Is it because we’re lazy? Yes. Stop being lazy. You’re not my teenage stepson, so you’ll actually listen when I say, “stop being lazy!” Does it take much effort to burn a CD or DVD once a month? How about a little drag and drop action between two Windows Explorer or Mac OS Finder windows?

In the film-only era, organizing your photos meant putting them in photo albums and storing the negatives in a safe place. Did we ever do that? Based on how people are now, I doubt that many people’s photos were organized. I still have shoeboxes with envelopes in random nooks and crannies in my house! My digital photos have fared much better. In the digital world, organizing your photos is easier than ever. Having a backup copy is within the reach of our budgets, our technology, and the precious time we have.

Several of my older co-workers in the past were afraid of the computer and skeptical of the security of the data. The argument always was, “but what if something happens to the computer?”

My internal dialogue went like this, “Sure Louise. Your paper filing system is really secure. What if we had a fire? All the electronic files we have on the swappable backup drive is off-site. We’ll still have those files. Your paper files are toast! See what the boss will think if you spent the next 6 days doing nothing but photocopying every sheet of paper in our file cabinets. Then see what he thinks about leasing storage space across town to keep all this paper!”

Storing your data, or in this case, your photographs, in digital form is the easiest, most cost effective, time-efficient, and most secure option available to us.

Backup Methods

Backup strategies range from the simple to the elaborate. Your family photos are no less valuable, but you don’t need the same robust solutions that professional photographers use. The important thing is, you must do something.

CD-R and DVD-R

Once your photos are organized, it’s only a matter of dragging and dropping the folders into your CD/DVD burning software or your external hard drive. If your photos are organized on your “live” drive, then they will be organized on your backup media too.

External Hard Drives

I’ve seen many references to CD-Rs and DVD-Rs being an affordable method of storage. Byte for byte, even an external firewire drive (more expensive than USB drives) are cheaper than the equivalent storage in CD-Rs and DVD-Rs!

Hard drives are always getting cheaper and cheaper. This is the most convenient method of redundant storage. You can drag and drop folders from one window to another. Voila! Your photos are saved to more than one location. You win extra bonus points for stashing the external hard drive off-site, like in your desk drawer at work.

Memory Cards

Memory cards also continue to drop in price. For special events, consider buying memory cards just for the occasion and storing them somewhere secure. Of course, you’ll also have the images on your hard drive, your external drive, and a CD-R too.

Multiple Locations

The ultimate in security is to have your data in different locations. This protects your family memories from natural disasters.

Send a CD-R copy to your relatives. They would love to see the pictures, and storing your backups off-site is as secure as it gets. Likewise, you should offer to store their backups too.

Upgrade to a pro account on Flickr. For $25 a year, you get unlimited storage. You can even set up your computer to automatically upload your photos to your account. You will be uploading uncompressed full-resolution photos, but do not fear. They can be set for private viewing only. The added bonus here is, you can just flag the ones you want to share publicly with a few clicks.

There is some debate on the volatility of the media we use to back up. CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, and hard drives each have their advantages and potential downfalls. Data can get corrupt on any storage medium. However, with redundancy, you are ensured that your family memories are secure. Storage media fails, but the chance of all of your redundant media failing is slim.

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