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Digital Photo Backup

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All About Why and How to Backup Your Digital Photos

You go happily about your business snapping photos of important events, loved ones, memorable vacation sites or perhaps you are a professional creating the images that others will covet for their beauty and uniqueness. Once your digital camera and memory card are full, you download those photos to your computer for editing, sharing, or perhaps printing.

But then what? Are those precious photos left sitting on your computer hard drive, unprotected from a virus or some type of physical disaster? Are your photos safe? Could you lose them forever, without a trace? Read further to learn about your digital photo backup options.

Use the expandable Table of Contents below to find things quickly on this page.

Why Storing Digital Pictures on Your Computer Isn't Good Enough

Digital photo backup is critical if your photos are important to you. Here are some reasons why your computer is not the place, or certainly not the only place, to store your digital photos.

  • Hard drives sometimes fail resulting in a potential loss of all items stored.

  • Fire, flood, and other natural occurences can destroy computer equipment

  • With your computer housing many files and a limited storage capacity, it's not inconceivable that there won't be room for large photo files or that they can't be accomodated without detrimental effects on computer performance.

  • The hard drive on your computer is connected to the internet; that exposes it to viruses which make it vulnerable to crashing; resulting in the potential loss of your photos along with everything else.

    • Digital Picture Backup on Discs

    One affordable option for digital photo backup is to store your images on discs:

  • CD: These discs are inexpensive and easy to use in general since most computers have a CD burner. The storage capacity is fair; about 700 MB per disc. The life of the disc should be at least 60 or 70 years.

  • DVD: Most people would need to purchase a stand-alone DVD writer to make use of this option but a DVD offers about 4.7 GB of storage on a single layer or more in a multi-layer format.

    In either case, the discs should be protected from physical damage by keeping them in cases. Ideally they would also need to be stored in a fire proof safe.

    • Get a DVD to Backup Your Photos

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    Stand-Alone DVD Writers

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    Digital Picture Backup Using Online Services

    Another attractive option for digital photo backup is to submit photos to one of the various online services. The fee is generally quite small.

    With this option, physical damage is essentially impossible although slow connection speeds and hackers could theoretically create some havoc in accessing your photos.

    Just a Few Online Services to Use for Backing Up Digital Pictures

    Kodak Gallery
    As the name would imply an online photo sharing/storage site by Kodak.
    MediaMax
    This site offers up to 25 GB of free storage.
    Shutterfly
    Organize and edit as well as store your photos at Shutterfly.
    Photo Bucket
    A photo and video sharing/storing site.
    My Photo Album
    Store photos and create albums at Myphotoalbum.
    Snapfish
    For your film or digital photos.
    Flickr
    The infamous photo sharing/storage site.

    Learn More About Online Photo Backup and Sharing

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    How to Use Flickr for Digital Photo Backup: Tutorials

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    Digital Picture Backup Using an External Hard Drive

    Digital photo backup in the form of an external hard drive should offer much more memory capacity than your computer. In addition, if it is used exclusively to store your pictures it shouldn't be exposed to internet villans that could potentially cause damage.

    Some external hard drives are quite portable. Some offer a few TB, not MB or GB, but TB of storage so that they should easily accomodate large file sizes and huge collections of photos.

    To be an effective backup however, an external hard drive should obviously be stored separately from the computer or other photo storage device in case of catastrophe.

    Shop for External Hard Drives

    Acomdata External Hard Drives

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    Fantom External Hard Drives

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    Iomega External Hard Drives

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    Kanguru External Hard Drives

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    LaCie External Hard Drives

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    Tutorial for Beginners: How to move a file from a computer to external hard drive

    How to move a file from a computer to external hard drive
    by helicub81 | video info

    10 ratings | 11,722 views
    curated content from YouTube

    External Hard Drive Reviews

    Maxtor OneTouch III 750GB External Hard Drive
    by TigerDirectBlog | video info

    32 ratings | 11,688 views
    curated content from YouTube

    Other Digital Photo Backup Devices

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    Digital Photo Backup: Did You Find What You Need? Let Us Know!

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    • Reply
      squidootime Apr 14, 2011 @ 6:43 am | delete
      Good info - liked it.
      Cheers
    • Reply
      Irenemaria Dec 7, 2010 @ 9:21 am | delete
      Such richness in saving photos. I basically use one of my laptops as an external harddrive. And some photos are on usb - memories and others on CD´s
    • Reply
      BevsPaper Jan 28, 2010 @ 4:12 pm | delete
      Great advice on backing up our digital photos!
    • Reply
      rms May 1, 2008 @ 7:09 am | delete
      You make a very good point! Thanks for sharing this information. I need to get to work on backing up my photos!
    • Reply
      bbug Mar 27, 2008 @ 1:22 pm | delete
      Great info. I have thousands of photos and I use an external hard drive to store most of my photos.
    • Reply
      poddys Mar 11, 2008 @ 9:11 am | delete
      Great lens. I am virtually paranoid about losing my photos. I back up mine on an external USB drive, and with the prices today dropping fast it's cheap enough to have multiple drives. A 500gb drive is now under $150 (USA). Offsite backups are also invaluable - in case of fire, flood, theft or virus attacks etc. CD or DVD backups can be stored at other family houses, or at work. Also consider rotating multiple memory cards so that your most recent photos stay on a card for several months.
    Show All
    Photo Credits:
    Introduction: don fulano.
    Why Storing Digital Pictures on Your Computer Isn't Good Enough: goldberg.
    Digital Picture Backup Using Disks: aussiegall.
    Digital Picture Backup Using External Hard Drive: barnoid.
    Digital Picture Backup Using Online Services: James and Vilija.

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    mulberry

    As webmaster of an online home electronics store I put this page together to help you understand the options for digital photo backup to save you the grief... more »

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