Saving copies of your photos: Five tips
Capturing the special moments in photos is a holiday tradition. But will those pictures be around to treasure in decades to come? In today’s digital world, photos pile up chaotically on hard drives, often with no backup. Here are some options for saving copies of your pictures for future generations.
•External hard drive: These sell for $70 to $200 and typically connect to your computer’s USB drive. They’re a reliable way of backing up large numbers of photos and other data. The disadvantage: If both computer and hard drive are under the same roof, a natural disaster or theft could take them both out.
•CDs and DVDs: Copying your photos onto discs is another way to make sure you’re covered, at least for the foreseeable future. Disadvantage: They don’t have as much storage capacity as most external hard drives. And they probably will be replaced by future technologies. Remember floppy disks?
•Flash drives: Small and handy to store, these items generally attach to computer USB drives for data transfer. But they also have relatively limited capacity and an unknown future.
•Cloud: Storing photos and other files in what’s called the cloud (actually, remote servers) enables you to access your treasures from different locations and on different devices. Scores of websites providing this service have emerged, some with limited storage space for free.
•Paper: Remember paper photographs? The ones that got magnetically stuck to the refrigerator? Some experts believe that they might outlast digital technology. With printed photos, you don’t have to worry about a computer mishap or whether digital storage devices will still be usable in decades to come. “You probably won’t want to print all of your digital images, but making hard copies of your favorites is a wise choice,” wrote Aimee Baldridge in “Organize Your Digital Life.”
