How do you keep digital photos?

[Alicia64]

We have 50 billion photos of the kids.

 

Dh says that my laptop won't hold all the photos fro  '03 to today. So we have '15 to today on my laptop.

 

I've said, "I get why they can't live on my laptop, but is there something we can do so that I can access them when necessary? Put them on discs? On thumb drives? Something?"

 

I get stonewalled.

 

What do you do? He never handled all the video I took of the kids either. So they live on tiny tapes -- if you have a suggestion for how to get everything on CD's I'm open to that too.)

 

TIA!!

 

Alley

[JanetC]

External hard drive is good if you are afraid of archiving them to the internet. Otherwise, icloud, onedrive, and google drive are options.

[Ailaena]

I have a large external hard drive because at the time, it was too expensive to archive them online. It may be cheaper nowadays, but a 2TB hard drive is <$100.

 

You could always put a second hard drive in your computer, as well.

 

 

ETA: no second drive for a laptop, sorry

Edited September 24, 2017 by Ailaena

[JFSinIL]

I use DropBox.  I also have a ton at Shutterfly - copies from DropBox.  And the best of the best (including old photos of deceased relatives) are at Ancestry.com

Am still scanning in all the gazillion photos I took in the pre-digital age.  About 15 more years worth to go.

Edited September 24, 2017 by JFSinIL

[goldberry]

I have them on a thumb drive (usb drive?) and have been slowly uploading to Shutterfly.  I don't find Shutterfly very friendly though.  I try to upload new ones as I get them, so I am only working on older ones and the new ones are taken care of.

[happypamama]

I have a large external hard drive, but I've also slowly been uploading all of them to Amazon Prime.

[Wheres Toto]

I have two external hard drives that I use to back up all the files and pictures from my laptop.  They are stored in a fire-proof lockbox.

[laundrycrisis]

Cloud storage that we pay for. 

[thessa516]

Amazon Prime photo storage.

[nixpix5]

I am going to begin this by saying I am a bit OCD about my pictures but here is what I do. Every month I download them all onto an external and also burn two copies of the pics on to high quality dvds. I mark them month and year and also may make a note if they have a special event on them. I place them in chronological order. I have two photo boxes with slip cover files and I place one copy each in them. One photo box stays in our closet and the other in our fireproof safe. Really good photos I may place in a file on the computer to send to the photo center for hard copies or to a book binding place to make photobooks. I have done this for vacations for the kids for example.

 

Video recordings get their own dvds and get labeled accordingly. Ultrasound pics of the kids, photo booth pics etc get scanned in and put on disc. Hard copies go in their own photo box or albums.

 

I care so very much about my photo memories. My oldest sons had home videos on vhs and some degraded over time. I transferred them to dvd but since then I have really stayed on top of protecting them.

[regentrude]

Our photos all live on the laptop, but we split the archive into different parts so it loads faster. We also have a regular backup of everything on external drives. We also have a central external backup server for our home network.

I would never rely on cloud storage alone! It is nice for a copy, but I much prefer having a hard drive in addition. 

We have one backup drive copy in the bank in a safety deposit box.

Edited September 24, 2017 by regentrude

[Lanny]

If the drive in your Laptop dies and that's the only place you have your Photos or other Data, you are Toast. Things should be backed up locally (to an external Hard Disk Drive, to DVDs, etc.) and also to the Cloud.

I have a Free account on Box.com that allows up to 10 GB of space free.  You would probably need a lot more space, and need to pay for it (on Dropbox, or Box, or Google or One Drive), but it would be worth 5 or 10 dollars a month, to have all of your stuff safe and sound, off-site.  

 

A little over 2 years ago, I bought 2 low end Western Digital External Hard Disk Drives. the first one is 1 TB and we ended up giving that one to my Stepson for his music. Then, I ordered another one, a 2 TB. Both are working OK.  I use the 2 TB to make "System Image" backups of the hard drives in my laptops.  I bought them on eBay and they were each approximately USD $70 at that time.

 

There are many ways one can backup. There are many horror stories from people who did not backup and lost everything.  

 

Backup, Backup, Backup...

 

OT:   We had a VHS-C video camera and also need to get those transferred onto DVDs or something. 

[Alicia64]

I have a large external hard drive, but I've also slowly been uploading all of them to Amazon Prime.

 

This isn't me: it's DH. I know what he'd say, "What happens when/if Amazon falls apart and ceases being?"

 

Same w/ Cloud.

 

I'm just parroting him.

 

Alley

[Lanny]

With regard to Cloud Backups:  Anyone who has Data (photos, music, school work, masterpiece in progress, etc.) that is important to them should back it up in several places. On site and Off site.  If you do not want Cloud Backups, then have a Remote Server somewhere else, preferably in another part of the USA, and backup to the drive on that server.

 

I have my stuff in Dropbox and in Box in the Cloud.  So, it's on my local HDD (hard disk drive) and in the Cloud. Possibly tomorrow I will get my Backup Laptop out and update the anti virus, etc. and it will Sync to Dropbox and Box.  So I will have another local copy on the Backup Laptop.

 

Not having an off-site backup can really bite one in the rear. What would happen, for example, if someones house or business was destroyed, by a fire or a tornado or a hurricane and there is no off-site backup? They are toast. 

 

Another thing is that you can have one backup and you try to Restore from it and it is corrupted or something.  The other backup can save you.

 

When I Backup our WordPress sites, I use the "Duplicator" Plugin in WordPress, and then I log into the cPanel and do a "Full" backup with the Backup wizard. I download them to my Laptop and then Upload them to my Box.com account. So, I have 2 Backups, created with different Utilities. If worst came and I needed to restore, hopefully at least one of those 2 methods would work properly.

[Anne]

Re: the video tapes/tiny tapes, etc. There are commercial services which will transfer those to a CD or to whatever is current.

 

Anne

[mlktwins]

I'm a little OCD too -- LOL.  I have my current year on my laptop, all 12+ years of them on my desktop (although I'm running out of space and am getting them off my desktop), and two external hard drives (they both have ALL my pictures).  I used to do CD's too until maybe 3 years ago.  TOO MANY CD's.  I actually have 2 copies of the CDs I've already done (one is here and one is in the safe deposit box).  I now rotate my external hard drives between the safe deposit box and a fire proof box here at home.  I also have scans of all our important receipts, wills, insurances papers, bank statements, etc. on those drives.

 

I don't have anything in the cloud.  I have some pics on Shutterfly.  I am nervous to rely on the cloud.

[happypamama]

This isn't me: it's DH. I know what he'd say, "What happens when/if Amazon falls apart and ceases being?"

 

Same w/ Cloud.

 

I'm just parroting him.

 

Alley

I wondered about that as well, or what if I decide I'm over being a Prime member. For me, it's one extra place to store them. Main backup storage is the external HD, but Prime is a backup. I like the idea of burning them to a bunch of DVDs as well.

 

(And all of BabyNate's pics are backed up all over the place. But I can't make copies of his blanket, hat, or hand/foot casts, so here's hoping we never have a fire!)

[thessa516]

This isn't me: it's DH. I know what he'd say, "What happens when/if Amazon falls apart and ceases being?"

 

Same w/ Cloud.

 

I'm just parroting him.

 

Alley

 

Then you'll migrate them to whatever new thing they'll have by then. 

 

But you have to know that I had an external hard drive that one day just quit working. We were able to eventually retrieve most of the photos, but since that time we use the cloud. I have more faith in Amazon sticking around longer than whatever hard drive. Also, if something happens to my home (fire or natural disaster), I'll still have my photos.

[JFSinIL]

BTW I mentioned Ancestry.com in my earlier post - get a cheap membership for a one or so and make a family tree and upload the best photos to it.  Not just old shots of ancestors, you can upload shots of the living, too. Make your tree private so no one sees it.  Then stop your membership - your tree and photos will NOT be deleted.  I only reactivate my membership when the fit takes me to do some work on my tree (and upload photos) and it is all still there. 

 

Since I make a lot of photo books, and now photo pillow, throw blankets, calendars, etc (great grandparent gifts) I have a lot of photos stored at Shutterfly.  But everything is also at Dropbox.  I figure $10/month is good for a ton of storage I have. 

[almondbutterandjelly]

I upload them to Shutterfly.  There's an app now that makes it super easy.  Then once a year, I spend a couple weeks making a hard-copy yearbook for that year, which I order and keep on my bookshelves.

[J-rap]

I wonder about this as well.  I have lots of photos stored on two external hard drives, but I've been told by many people that even these external drives won't last forever.  In fact, places like Apple stores have told me that generally external drives don't have a life beyond 5 - 10 years.  

 

I try and store some photos online, like on Shutterfly.  But that process is soooo slow for me and completely clogs our internet.  I guess our internet isn't lightning fast and that's probably why.  

 

I turn our most important pics into photo books.

 

Maybe by the time the external drives fail, Shutterfly shuts down and loses everything, and the photo books become too faded or lost, no one will be around anymore to care.

 

 

 

[Lanny]

There was a thread on WTM, a month or 2 ago, about someone whose Western Digital External Hard Disk Drive had died and it had important stuff on it.  I paid attention, because both of the External Hard Disk Drives we have are Western Digital. However, the brand is irrelevant.  They are Mechanical Devices. They will eventually fail.  Although I only have Free Cloud Storage accounts at this time, I have confidence that Box, for example, knows how to protect whatever I have stored there. They do not have the number of Enterprise and Government customers they have, for nothing.  Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, they all have a lot better handle on how to store and backup your data, and mine, than we do. 

 

Box   https://www.box.com/

 

Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/

 

GoogleDrive https://www.google.com/drive/

 

Microsoft OneDrive  https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/

 

Note: I read in an article that if one pays for a certain amount of OneDrive storage, they can use Office 365 Free.  And/or if they buy Office 365 they get a bunch of OneDrive space.   If that is still true, it might tilt the vote for Microsoft OneDrive if one is paying for Cloud Storage.

[Amy in NH]

I have two external hard drives that I use to back up all the files and pictures from my laptop. They are stored in a fire-proof lockbox.

Same

[Amy in NH]

But you have to know that I had an external hard drive that one day just quit working.

That's why we have two.

[MEmama]

I print them out. One per day and keep them in a Project Life album.

 

Long ago I realised there would never, ever be a time that I would go through the zillions of digital photos I take, so there's truly no sense for me to worry about losing them. Yes, I could lose my albums in a fire, but it's a small risk I'm willing to take. Not worrying about digital storage is actually very freeing to me.

[Lizzie in Ma]

External hard drive as well as backed up to Shutterfly.

[Beth S]

Yes, we all need to use multiple avenues to backup our photos.

It's hard to remember to back them up monthly.

I know my generation does NOT trust the Cloud.  :)

 

But it's really an important backup addition to the external hard drive, and DVDs (which hold more photos than a CD) that you can hold in your hand. 

Google Drive was easy for me to learn, and is tied to my gmail account.

I've been scanning my in-laws' old photos, and this is the effortless way to share them with the extended family.

And after all that work scanning, I really, really do not want to accidentally delete the folder(s)!

 

Just a nudge to take action now.

 

(And photos can be made into wonderful Christmas gifts!)

[Guest]

External hard drives and cloud based backups.

[nixpix5]

Then you'll migrate them to whatever new thing they'll have by then.

 

But you have to know that I had an external hard drive that one day just quit working. We were able to eventually retrieve most of the photos, but since that time we use the cloud. I have more faith in Amazon sticking around longer than whatever hard drive. Also, if something happens to my home (fire or natural disaster), I'll still have my photos.

After reading this thread I pulled out our oldest external to check since I hadn't in a couple of years. We used it for pic storage, and it no longer functions at all. Not sure if we will be able to retrieve anything from it but those pics are on disc thank goodness.