Jan 27 2009

Backing up your digital photos

For those of you that are super organized…ignore this post. For those of you that aren’t, I thought I’d give a little insight into my routine with my personal digital images. If you aren’t backing up your photos, you are playing a risky game of losing a lot of documented memories. This is my routine to insure I don’t lose my photos due to computer or camera error….or Ashley error:)

**I have 2 memory cards designated for family photos. Through the course of the month I keep all personal photos on those cards and I do not delete any pictures I want to keep. I download pictures throughout the month to my computer, but do not delete them off my memory card.

**At the end of each month (usually the first day of the next month) I do the following:
!. Save all pictures from the month rename “3.08Campbells-001″ (or whatever the month and year is) in order
2. Burn all the renamed files to a dvd (cd is usually too small to hold my files)
3. Copy all files to an external hard drive
4. Delete all files off my memory card
5. Delete everything except my absolute favorites off my computer

This allows me to keep my computer free, have everything organized by the month. By keeping them on a hard drive and dvd, the risk of losing them is a little smaller. And if you are crazy like me you can keep your dvds in a fireproof box, so if your house burns down you still have all your pictures!

So…I encourage you to start this January keeping your files backed up and organized. You can buy an external hard drive at most electronic stores.

This also helps when I create albums for the year…post coming soon on that.

Posted in SnapShops & Tips

by AshleyAnn

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lauren - Does any external hard drive work better than another?

Jamie - I was just wondering the other day how you keep track of all your photos. I feel like I can’t find a good way to keep my actual photographs organized so I’m looking forward to your albums post. Thx for the tips!

Jeannette Swan - I don’t even have a cd burner – I have wanted one for a long time, but haven’t even looked for one. I know I need too!! All I have ever done to back up pictures is upload them to Shutterfly and order a DVD from them with my pictures on them. I know I need a much better method. Thanks for the advice.

Ryan - Great advice. I also back up my photos and music to Amazon’s S3 service, which is basically like an external hard drive, but it puts your data on their secure network instead of being stored locally. I like it because they store it redundantly across the US at their data centers so, if one point fails, you have several backups. Plus you can access your file from anywhere (assuming you have computer access) and, if there’s a major catastrophe at your home (fire, flood, etc.) you don’t lose everything.

Best of all: there’s no monthly fee. You just pay per KB of data you transfer. It’s very cost effective and it gives me great peace of mind. :)

Georgia - This is so helpful. I have been trying to come up with a good backup system. I currently have photos on my PC, duplicates on my laptop and backups either on DVD or flash drives. Now that I am creating digital albums, I have even more to back up. So it is becoming time consuming and bulky. I am looking into Carbonite, which sounds like it is similiar to Amazon’s service that Ryan mentioned. Anyone else have experience with online back up services?

brittany - My external hard drive crashed about 6 months ago, taking all my digital pictures from the last 7 years with it. I am so leery of putting them on something else that I am not even taking them off my camera which means I am not enjoying them. HELP!! What is a reliable external hard drive to buy? What would you suggest besides CDs? Do you know of a magical person in town that can retrive my memories so that I can sleep peacefully at night & not cry when I think of little girl baby pictures trapped in a metal box? Oops sorry – got a little emotional! I would love any advice you can give!

AshleyAnn - Great input on here guys, thanks for all the other tips. My system is simple and works for me. I suppose if my hard drive crashed and all my dvds got lost I’d be bummed. However, I do have duplicate printed albums of each year also with my favorite pics. There are so many options out there, but the reality is nothing will fully guarantee you never lose pictures. The amount of protection you choose is up to you, I just wanted to encourage those that never back up their photos or organize them to do so. Keep the advice coming!

Ryan - Brittany – the average hard drive has a maximum life of 5 years and an average life of 3 years (according to most tech magazines). It’s not a question of if your hard drive will fail…it’s a question of when it will fail. That’s why Ashley’s 100% right in saying you need to back up everything to DVD or CD. I also think using an online service, such as Amazon or Sugarsync (though SugarSync is much more expensive) is a great idea. Total peace of mind. :)

Faith Buss - It’s 4am and the kids won’t stay asleep. I might as well organize my photos.

Where did you have your printed albums done? Are they handmade scrapbooks or a Shutterfly book-type album? Does that make sense? :)

Jane - I’m super paranoid about losing our photos too. We also use an external hard drive and a 2nd back up drive that’s kept in the fireproof safe (no, you’re not the only paranoid one). The only thing we don’t do is burn DVD’s, but we upload all of our pictures onto our unlimited Flickr account which is a great way to keep everything off-site. I really need to get going and scan in all of my older pictures that are in scrapbooks since there are no backups of those.

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