You love taking pictures but do you backup! What is your strategy for making sure your treasured and priceless images are safe?
Well most people don’t think about this at all or think but never act. There are many discussions and posts on the web that explain the pros and cons of backup strategies and solutions. And I am going to talk about them as well…not!!
What I want to share are some simple practices that will help secure your photos.
Backing up to external drive
This is probably the most easiest and inexpensive way to backup your photo. Buy a big enough external USB drive like 1Tb or more and copy all your photos once a month to it.
To make the copying process easy, keep your photos under a main folder called “Photos” or “Pictures” or whatever you prefer. You can then just drag this main folder from your computer to external drive to copy everything.
Now keeping this external drive in the same location is okay but you can also consider storing it at a friends place or at your office. This adds another layer to securing your precious memories.
Cloud options
There are many online storage options out there where you can upload your photos online. Most giveaway some free space before you have to pay some money for additional storage. And the list goes on!!
You can setup an account, download the providers software and configure which folder(s) you backup to them. Sit back and let your computer do the work. In this case again if you have one main folder like “Photos” you can select it to be uploaded and keep storing new photos under this one. This way the providers software will automatically include and backup new photos.
What do I use?
I use both strategies!!!
My main folder is called “Photos” which doesn’t sit on my computer but on an external drive. Then I use a second external drive to backup my “Photos” folder. Often enough I store this second external drive at my Parent’s place.
I also use CrashPlan. They have a family plan that is quite inexpensive and gives you Unlimited storage for up to 10 computers. So my “Photos” folder synchronises with CrashPlan server. The great advantage with CrashPlan is that if you lost all the images and my second backup drive as well CrashPlan can ship you all your data on an external drive to allow faster restore. Of course there is a fee for this but having this as possible option is a great relief.
