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.
Contents at a Glance
- Why Storing Digital Pictures on Your Computer Isn't Good Enough
- Digital Picture Backup on Discs
- Digital Picture Backup Using Online Services
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.Digital Picture Backup on Discs
One affordable option for digital photo backup is to store your images on discs: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
Stand-Alone DVD Writers
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
How to Use Flickr for Digital Photo Backup: Tutorials
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
Fantom External Hard Drives
Iomega External Hard Drives
Kanguru External Hard Drives
LaCie External Hard Drives
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
How to move a file from a computer to external hard drive
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External Hard Drive Reviews
Other Digital Photo Backup Devices
EZDigiMagic 2nd Generation Portable CDR Burner, Combo Digital Photos Backup/Sharing Device, Color Silver/Blue
Amazon Price: $239.95 (as of 07/05/2009) 
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rms wrote...
You make a very good point! Thanks for sharing this information. I need to get to work on backing up my photos!
Posted May 01, 2008
bbug wrote...
Great info. I have thousands of photos and I use an external hard drive to store most of my photos.
Posted March 27, 2008
poddys wrote...
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.
Posted March 11, 2008
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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