Since we have discussed how to properly store your digital photographs, I thought I would take a moment to ask you if you are actually doing it and how often. In addition, it is important to discuss when to do it. There is a reason this is important to me right now.
Yesterday while writing, my laptop started acting up. It took me a long, long time to figure out what was wrong, and I won’t bore you with the details, however one thing that kept crossing my mind was that every photograph I had taken in the past week had not been backed up. These were pictures of our new puppy, of my son’s 13th birthday, of the Illinois State Fair and other photographs that I had painstakingly captured onto my digital camera.
I’m pretty habitual about getting the photographs off the camera card as soon as possible, so they were safely stored on my laptop until my next back up. This has not occurred yet, and there were hundreds of photographs, honestly, treasured irreplaceable photographs that had not been backed up.
So when do you back them up?
I used to do it once a week or every two weeks. I am also really habitual about having two or three storage locations. We purchased a My Book and I love it and I use it to store all of my photographs. I also keep them on my laptop. In addition, I usually also make a back up copy on our desktop computer that the kids use. Except the later I do only once or twice a month. I had not backed anything up and only had them on my laptop. And my laptop wasn’t cooperating or even loading to allow me to get the photographs off.
Literally I was sick about it. I will tell you now that I was able to save them all, fix the problem all by myself and save the laptop from having to be reformatted. However, I learned a valuable lesson that I am passing on to all of you. Back up, back up, back up. Often. Don’t wait. If you can do it right after you upload the photographs, do it then. If you can transfer them to CD, a back up drive, another laptop or desktop computer, do it. Because all it takes is one computer error or crash and they are eaten up or they cost a fortune to have them retrieved by a professional, and even that isn’t always a guarantee.
So this article is mainly a reminder to back up your digital photographs. I have backed them up in all three of my standard places, and will continue to do it every couple of days.
So when do you back up and where do you back them up?