Anyone scan documents at home for long term storage?

[Tap]

I feel like I am buried in paperwork storage. I have 2 daughters with medical conditions and many specialists. Add to that, retirement documents, bills that are waiting for insurance payments, 'things to do' that include phone calls, my daughters SSI information, etc, etc, etc.  I have a small mountain each month. I have an entire 4 inch binder, of just my daughter's school documents (saved in case I need it in the future to show lack of progress). Another series of binders full of her behavior incidents (in case we have to change schools and I need documents to show what has already been done).  Extensive medical documents and test results. 

I am considering buying a good scanner, scanning it all. I will toss the hard copies of school docs/testing results in the attic and get it all out of sight. I have read of scanners that can somewhat recognize what type of documents they are, but wonder if they are very accurate.

I also worry about hard drive storage (I will buy an external drive for this purpose). I had one go bad once, and I lost copious amounts of photos. My laptop died but I  wasn't worried because I had a back up of the pix. When I went to access the external drive, I realized it wasn't working and I lost it all. 😞 (Hence my idea of a box in the attic of hard copies). 

I no longer trust doctors to store information. My older daughter lost immunization records and had to be re-immunized, when the office scanned her medical file to digital and there are pages missing. There are page numbers on the docs and there are about 3 pages missing one of which was the 2nd page of immunizations. Digital files can get corrupted or misplaced, so I worry about expecting to access things from an online portal. We have had issues with one doctor requesting testing at another facility and neither having rights to post the results online or wanting to give me a hard copy of the testing, so it looks like the test was never done.  I have also seen it IRL. I work in pharmacy and we only store 3 years of records for easy access. We have patients with multiple files (different addresses/name misspelled etc) so a file may look complete but isn't. Anything older than 3 years, takes about a month  to request from corporate records and only 10 years are stored at all. One time I needed medical records sent from one doctor to another and they refused to do anything other than a 3 sentence summary. I had to pay a hefty sum for them to give the new doctor detailed records. (New doctor was looking for a pattern and wanted detailed, visit specific notes.) So now, I save visit summaries just in case. OY!  Tooooo Much Paper!!!! 

Anyone scan docs they want to have access to but don't need to see every day?  

[TravelingChris]

This is what my husband does.  And it has been very helpful with all of our medical issues. 

I try to get medical records all the time.  So much is wrong.  For example, the nurse at the office called and said all my tests came back normal.  K haven't checked all of them but T3 was on the lowest normal for Quest Labs but for Cleveland clinic, it was lower than normal by 10.  

[Tap]

1 hour ago, TravelingChris said:

This is what my husband does.  And it has been very helpful with all of our medical issues. 

I try to get medical records all the time.  So much is wrong.  For example, the nurse at the office called and said all my tests came back normal.  K haven't checked all of them but T3 was on the lowest normal for Quest Labs but for Cleveland clinic, it was lower than normal by 10.  

We have had that happen as well! Dr says all is good, but there is a number that is way off. When I ask him, he says "it was just a fluke".  For a person with mystery symptoms...flukes are usually the rabbit trail we need !  

[Lanny]

If you are going to take the time to scan the documents in, I agree that simply storing the files on an external hard disk drive (we have 2 of them in the house) would be very risky.  I too have seen hard disk drives go bad and in the case of an external drive, one would discover that after a catastrophic failure. Not fun.  Not uncommon.

If one is going to take the time to do all of that scanning, it would be nice, if the files could also automatically (automagically) be uploaded to a Cloud account.  At the moment, I suspect, and this may not be accurate, that the most space for the dollar is  with Microsoft OneDrive? Or with Microsoft 365 with the free OneDrive space that comes with it? 

Storing the original papers is unfortunately probably necessary. There could be, in the future, a need for Original documents and if one doesn't have them, one is up a creek without a paddle.

I have tried over the years to backup my important files both locally and   off-site, after having 2 machines and some other things damaged or destroyed by nearby lightning strikes. That happened, twice, in about one year and I remember how on one occasion, my latest backup files were in my Dropbox space and that saved my rear and I was able to recover with the latest files in my Dropbox and the other files in other backups.

I have tried over the years to get DD to backup all of her files for her schoolwork, etc., and hopefully she is continuing to do that now that she is a university student. 

[Lanny]

1 hour ago, heartlikealion said:

I own an HP Envy Photo 7800 series. I am enrolled in the instant ink program. The biggest issue I've had lately is the computer saying the ink cartridge is loaded incorrectly (it's not). Maybe there are better models with less glitches. The scanner doesn't always want to communicate with my PC. I'm using wi-fi for all this. Well, I found out yesterday that depending on which scanning app I opened on my PC, it would recognize or not recognize the scanner. Turns out I had to search "HP Scan" on my PC for the app that would cooperate. Hope some of this helps. 

 

Is it possible that you can connect the HP Printer and your PC via Ethernet to your home LAN?  I realize that a lot of Laptops now don't have an Ethernet Port so that gives one   fewer options. My DD has access to Ethernet in her Dorm Room (probably extremely fast)  but her Lenovo Laptop which was assembled last year, doesn't have an Ethernet Port.   If you can use Ethernet it will be much faster and more importantly, much more stable.

[mlktwins]

I have been working towards getting rid of a lot of paper.  DH bought me a ScanSnap IX500 (it is several years old and there is now a more current model https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/peripheral/scanners/scansnap/ix500/ ).  I LOVE this thing.  It scans very quickly.  Great resolution.  You can do color, black and white, single sided, double sided, you can select your resolution.  It will do photos and business cards too, but I mostly use it for regular size documents and receipts (I scan a lot of those narrow receipts).  It wasn't cheap at the time, but it has served me well.  I also scan reproducible homeschool curriculum since I have twins.  That has come in handy over the years too.  

I am also trying to get all my dad's old tax returns scanned in so I have a copy.  I will leave the paper ones stored at his apartment because he has the room, but since I now do his taxes, I wanted a copy here to refer to if needed.  I'm also scanning his old medical records and shredding the less important papers.  

I will be glad to get it all done because all the paper is driving me crazy.

I would keep 2 copies on external drive.  Maybe rotate them each month so you would only lose your current month if your computer dies.  I download bank statements now, but I do printout and keep the year end statements have those in binders.  I feel better having that hard copy just in case.  I do still have all our medical records, but will start getting rid of those as I scan.  I will keep more important medical information, but we don't currently have major health issues here.

I also have a printer that scans, but its functionality can't touch my ScanSnap :-).  If you have a lot to do, I would look into it.      

[Tap]

2 minutes ago, mlktwins said:

I have been working towards getting rid of a lot of paper.  DH bought me a ScanSnap IX500 (it is several years old and there is now a more current model https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/peripheral/scanners/scansnap/ix500/ ).  I LOVE this thing.  It scans very quickly.  Great resolution.  You can do color, black and white, single sided, double sided, you can select your resolution.  It will do photos and business cards too, but I mostly use it for regular size documents and receipts (I scan a lot of those narrow receipts).  It wasn't cheap at the time, but it has served me well.  I also scan reproducible homeschool curriculum since I have twins.  That has come in handy over the years too.  

I am also trying to get all my dad's old tax returns scanned in so I have a copy.  I will leave the paper ones stored at his apartment because he has the room, but since I now do his taxes, I wanted a copy here to refer to if needed.  I'm also scanning his old medical records and shredding the less important papers.  

I will be glad to get it all done because all the paper is driving me crazy.

I would keep 2 copies on external drive.  Maybe rotate them each month so you would only lose your current month if your computer dies.  I download bank statements now, but I do printout and keep the year end statements have those in binders.  I feel better having that hard copy just in case.  I do still have all our medical records, but will start getting rid of those as I scan.  I will keep more important medical information, but we don't currently have major health issues here.

I also have a printer that scans, but its functionality can't touch my ScanSnap :-).  If you have a lot to do, I would look into it.      

This is what I am considering.  A separate scanner. I have a good printer/scanner but the speed leaves a bit to be desired. LOL Do you have the style that tries to anticipate what it is you scanned? If it does, does that feature work for you?

[mlktwins]

2 minutes ago, Tap said:

This is what I am considering.  A separate scanner. I have a good printer/scanner but the speed leaves a bit to be desired. LOL Do you have the style that tries to anticipate what it is you scanned? If it does, does that feature work for you?

Honestly, it is an older model (like in the picture) and I don't think it has that function.  The newer model may have that.  I'm sure you can adjust the settings to not do that if you find it doesn't work how you like it.  Maybe reading some reviews on the newer model would talk about that.  I'm sorry I'm not more help.  I think I got mine at Costco and it was quite a while ago.  It is still going strong.  The only problem I ran into was I started getting a line on some of my scans.  I realized it was dust on the actual scanner and I cleaned everything.  I had been leaving the scanner open when I wasn't using it and it gets dusty like everything else.  I haven't had that line since.  My boys use it now too quite a bit when scanning things to upload for on-line classes.  Very easy to use.

[Jentrovert]

I do. For a ton of papers, I use a Fujitsu (spelling?) ScanSnap scanner. Soooo nice! I bought it several years ago when I began converting everything to digital and it was so slow using flatbed and all-in-one. 

I still have a few boxes to go of older papers, but am almost caught up. For current things, as they come in, I scan with an app on my phone. If I let it pile up, I use the ScanSnap.

Everything uploads to Dropbox. I had an external hard drive at one time, but it quit working. I would have lost everything had it not been in the cloud. I'd like something external, but don't see any good options right now.

As far as medical, I have everything in Dropbox and also keep a binder. I don't take the binder to every appt, but can access on my phone if I need to. 

[Jentrovert]

Wow, I just googled the ScanSnap and seems it is more expensive than they used to be. 

I've had mine several years, though, and if you scan a lot it might still be worth it for the ease. 

[Jentrovert]

41 minutes ago, mlktwins said:

I have been working towards getting rid of a lot of paper.  DH bought me a ScanSnap IX500 (it is several years old and there is now a more current model https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/peripheral/scanners/scansnap/ix500/ ).  I LOVE this thing.  It scans very quickly.  Great resolution.  You can do color, black and white, single sided, double sided, 

lol I didn't see you had already posted about the ScanSnap! It is awesome. I think scanning double-sided is one of the best features. It really cuts down on time.

[Beth S]

Suggesting an easier alternative:

Set up a nice table with natural light, & take photos of each paper.
It would auto upload to Google Photos & there's an app that will put them into pdf if you prefer.

The time spent is in setting up the table, to get proper light exposure . . . not buying a scanner.

Just an idea.

[Happy Camper]

I also recommend the ScanSnap. It's fantastic! It also runs OCR (if you want it to) so you can search for a document by a keyword. Oh wait, that might be Evernote, which is what I was going to recommend you use to organize what you scan. It's so helpful, and I have an app on my phone so I can pull up documents on the go. I am far behind on my scanning, but I always feel better when I have scanned things in. You can also take pictures of papers (or kid's artwork!) and keep it organized. You can tag documents and/or keep them in folders called notebooks. You can also clip things from online, like recipes or articles and keep them for later. I love it. And since it's backed up online, I toss or shred everything. Highly recommend it! 

[Lanny]

The more I think about the Backup part of this, after you Scan the documents, is that Hard Disk Drives are going to fail. That's normal for mechanical devices. Or, sometimes, in the OS (Windows 10 File Manager in this case) it can't read the external hard disk drive. I only use my external hard disk drive for this Windows 10 Laptop now, when I make System Images with Clonezilla Live. Two or three times, the External Hard Disk Drive has become corrupted for some unknown reason and I have had to start over with it. Each time I did that, I lost whatever files were on the external hard disk drive.

Solution for anything that is critical critical critical is to upload to more than one Cloud Storage account.  I have several free ones: Dropbox is the first one I used and I use it the most, and generally for smaller files. I also have accounts now on Box and on Microsoft's OneDrive. (Google Drive is for my Gmail account, but that's another possibility).  Although until recently I wouldn't have considered Microsoft's OneDrive, apparently it has improved, greatly, and I believe it is one of the best options at this time and if Microsoft increases the free space available, that will be very nice. I read an article 2 or 3 days ago that said Microsoft is going to increase space for Free users from 5 GB (what I have now) to 100 GB?

After e Filing Income Tax returns they should be Downloaded in .PDF format from TurboTax or the tax service of your choice. 

ETA: And then the .PDF files of Income Tax Returns should be saved, locally and in the Cloud.

Edited July 5, 2020 by Lanny
add ETA