Many of us probably have pictures of ourselves, our loved ones and other things we care about in our homes. It's one of the things that makes your home a home.

Many of us also probably have pictures on harddrives, CDs, as well as other discs and types of memory.

In many cases, your home may be the only place that some of these photographs exist, whether in print or as files. The simple questions is why?

If disaster were to strike, what would happen to the photographs you care about? You might be like my mother who wishes she had more from her childhood, when many of her pictures were destroyed in a flood. With a few steps, that most of us can probably do, you can save copies of your photographs as files, scan them onto discs, and have someone who lives at some distance from you keep a copy of the disc for safekeeping. Convince them to do the same, and if anything ever happens, one of the things you can do to create a new home is print new copies.

Some of the photographs I have I consider priceless. One I love is stuck to the frame, but I am lucky to know my sister also has a copy. There is one that is the only that exists of me with my grandmother. If preserving a copy is so simple as getting it onto a DVD disc and making a copy of that disc, it's an effort of some time and a few dollars.

While your at it, why not reduce some of your vitals records to a digital format and put it on the same disc.

Buy a Pro account at Flickr.com . Unlimited storage with the ability to upload several GB a month. Costs less than $10 a month.

But 50 DVDs costs $30 or less. I don't know that I could fill that kind of space.

Do both.

Both is better.

Mostly, just make sure you do something.

Don't forget... DVDs do and will degrade over time. Especially the writeable ones that everyone uses for backup.

External USB Hardrive storage is pretty reliable. The magnetic platters that they use are pretty robust. Even magnetic tape is pretty hardy.

Thumbdrives are prone to degrading. I think 10 years is where they max out.

Best solution, multiple backups. Backup to DVDs and USB drives. Keep copies stored someplace safe. Obviously "offsite" backups are the way to go.

Digital media is fragile.

All I can say on this subject is you can't be paranoid enough with your data - especially your photos.

If you DO decide to digitize, you MUST - must must must must - have a DAILY backup plan that you don't ever fail to do.

You need AT LEAST 3 separate physical devices to back up your data and you need to make sure one is NEVER left in your home.

Use an online backup service as a 4th place to keep your files. I use Google Picassa a lot.

Scanning is a pain in the butt, takes a long time. It's worth it.

We've been 100% digital since the late 1990's and we've experienced every single form of data problem you can - you need a constant backup program.

Also, if you have some pictures that you can't scan, you can get good solid tripods for digital cameras that will let you take a picture of the picture to make a scanned image of it.

Be careful with online storage, most don't have any sort of gaurentee that their backups are valid, I lost a lot of data a few years ago when hotmail tried to use windows servers, all I got was an e-mail saying they suffered a loss.

I don’t like the idea of on line storage, putting your photos under control of someone else far away that I don’t know does not sit well. If the company goes under, gets bought out by someone else or whatever reasons you could loose access to your data. Web sites disappear all the time and I would guess that a few of them were involved in archival storage.



Better to burn a CD or DVD and store it with a relative or friend. Not much chance both of your homes will burn down. External storage (CDs, DVDs, Flash Drives or removable hard drives) is too easy and inexpensive to not have.

Online storage is the "last resort" - own your media, control your media, and have a plan "D" after that.