If you are like many of us, hundreds of digital photos reside on the personal computer.  At your home, is this the only place where they exist?  If all your images only reside on your computer’s hard drive, what happens if your hard drive were to fail?  You would lose those images.  It could be a month’s worth of photos, a year’s worth or worse yet all your photos!  How can you protect against this? Back Up!!

How you backup really doesn’t matter as long as you DO IT.  A backup means that images or files reside on another “source” which might be an external hard drive, CD/DVDs, online backup services, etc.    The method you choose is really what you are comfortable with but lets give you few ideas of ways to backup.

CD/DVDs/Blu-Ray Media 

• Advantages:  This is fairly easy to do and most computers have a disk burner.  People are familiar with burning disks.  Many type of disks are inexpensive.  If you take the disks out of your home and bring them elsewhere you protect from home catastrophe (fire or flood.)  
• Disadvantages:  It is time consuming to burn discs and many people don’t label the disks so finding the backup can also be time consuming.   You also need to remember periodically to make the backup disc!

External Hard Drives  

• Advantages:  The drives are fairly inexpensive and easy to use.  Many External Hard Drives (EHDs) come with software to automatically backup your images so it can be automated or there are many free tools to automatically backup to EHD. 
• Disadvantages: Unless you have 2 EHDs and can take on off-site (out of your home) you won’t be protected from home catastrophe.  EHDs seem to have a higher failure rate (a physical drop of the EHD can make them unusable.)

Online Backup Tools 

• Advantages:  This method doesn’t require you to buy additional hardware or media.   It also doesn’t require much expertise because many online backup tools are very simple to use.  This method can be automated so you don’t have to remember to do it.  Data is preserved off-site to protect from home catastrophe.   An additional benefit is data can possible be accessed via internet from other than your home computer.
• Disadvantages:  Most services require a monthly or yearly subscription fee.  (Intro plans maybe free but you might find that its not enough space to backup all your images.  Intro plans are great to try out the service and see if you like the tools.)   If you don’t have a good internet connection, this method might not be viable.

Online Photo Sites 

• Advantages:  This is very similar to Online Backup Tools except they specialize in images.  Your images can easily be shared with family and friends.  You choose your best ones to upload and thus your best ones will be backed up.     
• Disadvantages:  Make sure you choose online photo sites that let you retrieve the large original image files.  Some sites require a fee to let you have access to the originals or via mailed disk.  (Places such as Shutterfly.com burn a disk for $9.99.  Flickr and Smugmug)

Print your Images  
Although this method isn’t a true digital backup, having a hard copy of your best images will preserve them for people to view. 

• Advantages:  You can enjoy viewing your prints in the traditional way.  
• Disadvantages:   You probably won’t print all of them, just the best images.  Cost of printing can be expensive if you print a lot of them.  It won’t be as easy to make copies of them or duplicate them as having them in digital form.