Preserving Photos - Photo Back-up
Thursday, May 15th, 2008One of the many reasons people convert slides, prints and home movies to digital is preservation. Simply digitizing your photos is not enough however.
When photos and movies are in digital form, duplicates of the digital files can easily be made. Making duplicate copies is wise, to ensure that the media will be readable, if one copy should fail.
More important than the type of media you use to store digital files is storing a second copy at a different address or in a safe deposit box.
Here are some steps I suggest, so that your files don’t get lost to theft or destroyed by a catastrophe at your home. This applies to your digital camera photos as well as old photos or movies you may have converted to digital.
- Make multiple copies of your digital photos. Consider copying them to all of your computers.
- Make back-up DVD’s, two or more copies of each disk.
- Copy files to more than one portable hard drives and store one in a fireproof safe.
- MOST IMPORTANT! Store a set of your digital image files at a different address so that in the event of flood, fire or some other catastrophe, the off-site files will be safe. Maybe you have a second home / camp, even a detached garage?
- If you use one on-site and one off-site external drive to back up your data, swap them frequently.