astrid Posted December 2, 2008 Share Posted December 2, 2008 So I think my hard drive is struggling under the weight of the digital picture load. I really don't have TONS, but I'm starting to worry. I know I can get an external hard drive on which to store my photos, but dh said that a woman at his office stores all of her digital photos on Snapfish. Can you DO that? Do you trust it? Where do YOU store your digital photos? I need help! And so does my tired laptop! astrid Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snickerdoodle Posted December 2, 2008 Share Posted December 2, 2008 I put them on dvds. You can buy a USB memory stick too for relatively cheap too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tinag Posted December 2, 2008 Share Posted December 2, 2008 I put them on dvds. You can buy a memory stick too for relatively cheap too. I have heard not to store them on DVDs because they lose the quality or something like that, so you should store them on an external hardrive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
astrid Posted December 2, 2008 Author Share Posted December 2, 2008 I have heard not to store them on DVDs because they lose the quality or something like that, so you should store them on an external hardrive. I've heard that about storing them on CDs. Just as well; for some reason my laptop's CD writer is sulking. :rolleyes: I"m wondering if a flashdrive is trustworthy--- I'm just too paranoid! Anyone know about online photo hosting sites such as Snapfish? astrid Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hornblower Posted December 2, 2008 Share Posted December 2, 2008 I think I'm going to take the plunge and go with www.carbonite.com Backs up everything If you actually also need to remove stuff off your computer, I'd go with an external hard drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gardening momma Posted December 2, 2008 Share Posted December 2, 2008 You can buy a USB memory stick too for relatively cheap too. I"m wondering if a flashdrive is trustworthy--- I'm just too paranoid! I just learned from dh yesterday that you can't store things on a memory stick for too long or it will lose integrity. It has no power source that maintains the data. It stores low level energy in there, and if it's not refreshed (one way is to copy to your hard drive and copy it back to the memory stick), it will eventually lose the data. They (computer experts/manufacturers/scientists/etc) don't know how long it will take, but they say it will happen (maybe 5-10 years down the road, maybe more). He says there are probably other utilities that can refresh the data on the memory stick without having to remove the files & recopy them, but he doesn't know off hand what they are, just that there are probably some out there. (I had to call him in to the room to explain it all to me again so I can say it correctly here.) Floppy disk storage is different because the data is stored magnetically. Memory stick data is stored in micro chips. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TN Mama Posted December 2, 2008 Share Posted December 2, 2008 I'm not 100% about snapfish, but many online hosting sites such as snapfish require a minimum purchase in order to continue to store your photos. If you don't make the purchase (which is quite minimal, iirc) the photos are deleted. We use an external hd. I have also heard that storing photos on cds/dvds is not the way to go as they break down over time. I don't know this for a fact, it is just what I've heard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Janna Posted December 2, 2008 Share Posted December 2, 2008 Does the lack of quality for DVD's or CD's, include those you can buy at photo places such as Exposures? All they do is photography. Perhaps those CD's would be better? I think they are made to be archives. I'm interested because I was just thinking last week about getting a bunch of them so I could not rely on my jump drives. Besides, it's easier to label which photos are where on a CD, kwim? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AFwife Claire Posted December 2, 2008 Share Posted December 2, 2008 We put most of our pictures on snapfish, mainly so we can share them with all the farflung relatives, but it has crossed my mind that at least the pictures are there, should something happen to our hard drive! I put them on there for a long time without having bought anything, so I don't think there is any sort of minimum buying requirement to store them there. Several months ago I started ordering prints off of there too, and it has been wonderful! So now that's what I do all the time. And for Christmas presents for all the relatives, I made photo calendars relatively inexpensively from there, personalized with birthdates, anniversaries, etc. So now I am done with my Christmas shopping for my relatives! I am loving snapfish this year! : ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnnetteB Posted December 2, 2008 Share Posted December 2, 2008 We put them on CDs so that we have the backup copy just in case the computer croaks. I have a few online at Photobucket, but I am not sure if they guarantee that they will be there tomorrow. We do that so that family and friends can see them more easily. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Delighted3 Posted December 2, 2008 Share Posted December 2, 2008 and I upload them to http://www.scrapbookpictures.com. They do require that you purchase pictures at least once a year, but there is no minimum order. You can also download them back to your computer easily, which I am not sure you can do with other sites. I have over 5000 pictures uploaded and organized on that site and I highly recommend it. HTH, Joy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom2att Posted December 2, 2008 Share Posted December 2, 2008 I send all of my pics to Shutterfly, which I love--it's an automatic back-up. Yes they require a periodic minimum purchase, but it's very small, and I order all of my prints through them anyway (their prepaid plans are a good deal, though their shipping is high). I recently had them burn all of my photos onto a CD for double back-up, and so I could import select photos to my new computer without adding all of them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keptwoman Posted December 2, 2008 Share Posted December 2, 2008 We back up to an external hard drive. We also burn to CD and store at a relatives house in case of fire. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmoira Posted December 2, 2008 Share Posted December 2, 2008 I'm not 100% about snapfish, but many online hosting sites such as snapfish require a minimum purchase in order to continue to store your photos. If you don't make the purchase (which is quite minimal, iirc) the photos are deleted.I use Flickr for this purpose. I pay for the account, and, while I would have to pay to have the pictures burned to disc, I think not having to worry about backups is worth it. Smaller critical files I email to myself at my gmail account. Otherwise I don't back anything up, because I'm comfortable with the thought of having to reinstall everything in case of computer catastrophe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balancing Posted December 2, 2008 Share Posted December 2, 2008 Let me first say that you can never have too many backups. I have worked in storage managment in IT for very large companies. We would do daily, weekly, monthly and annual backups of data. Why..... because all hardware and electronic media storage will fail one day. I have a fear that entire generations of photos will be lost to the digital age. Please use mutliple backups: 1. Upload to photo storage web site (they do backups) 2. Backup photos to your external hard drive 3. Print hard copies of the photos Why all of these? Web site: I feel that web sites will keep your photos relatively safe, but what if they go out of business? That happened to me with Yahoo photos. And they did not send me a notification. Luckily I signed on and found out, and they did provide a method to have all the photos transfered to a different provider. External hard drive: Relatively safe and easy to access, but all hard drives can fail. Hard Copies: Photo prints have lasted for generations, but of course can be lost or damaged over time. I have started using the online service to have annual books printed so I at least have some photos in a hard copy form should something happen to the digital copies. It is so easy to take TONS of digital pictures that it really becomes too costly to print them all, but I like to select some to have in a hard copy form. If you have photos on a digital site, please jot that info down somewhere. If something should happen to you, you want to be sure your family knows where all the family photos are stored. Ok, probably more info than you wanted! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhonda in TX Posted December 2, 2008 Share Posted December 2, 2008 They don't have any purchase requirements. I think it's been 3 years or so since I've ordered pictures from them. I like knowing that if we were to have a fire or something, my photos are safe at Snapfish. However, I would not use it as my only source of photo storage. What if Snapfish has a fire? :) I've thought of getting an external hard drive for all my photos and maybe only storing the current year's photos on the computer itself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.