One Tip Wednesday

My latest project has been working to backup all of my digital photos. I take lots of photos both professionally and personally, so it's always a challenge for me to keep them all backed up. Part of my problem is that I have 3 computers where I often download photos: my Mac at work, my home desktop and home laptop.

Over the last couple months, I've been working to get them all moved onto my desktop, making sure to not miss any, but also to get rid of any duplicates. Next I began putting them in date order, organizing my files by month. Once that was done, I have started burning them onto DVDs in month order, putting as many months on one disk as possible, but keeping the months in order.

My next task is to buy an external 1 terabyte hard drive and move all of my photo files off of the desktop onto the external drive. I will also from that point on, keep my files on both my internal and external hard drives until I have enough to burn a disk. Once a new disk is burned, I will remove them from my computers internal drive, but leave them on the external, always having two copies.

So why both? The DVDs are a good way to permanently archive the photos, but they are not as accessible as I would like. Having them on an external hard drive will keep them accessible, but not taking up space on my desktop (which I'm quickly running out of). You can buy a 1 terabyte external drive for around $100, so very affordable.

Why don't I just keep my photos on my camera memory cards? With the number of photos I take, I would have to buy cards constantly. That would simply be too expensive.

What about Jump Drives? NO!!! Never use a jump drive/memory stick to archive anything. They fail often and are not meant to be used to archive. They are to only be used as temporary memory, to move files among computers.

Another idea is to also make an additional copy of your DVDs and put them in a bank safety deposit box or at someone else's home like your parents for safe keeping. In the event of a fire or other disaster, you won't lose your pictures.