Photo Backup

Few things would be more devastating to someone who enjoys photography than losing all of their photos in a computer theft or failure.  For this reason, it's extremely important to backup all important photos somewhere safe in case something happens to your computer or laptop.  I thought it would be a good idea to touch on this subject because of a recent computer issue that my family is facing with our home desktop computer.  Yesterday, a nasty virus (the Windows Vista Restore Virus, I believe) totally wrecked our computer.  My dad spent hours trying to fix it, but it seems impossible to remove the virus completely without professional help.  Even if we do take our computer to the experts for repair, it's uncertain as to whether we'll be able to recover all of the photos and other files that were saved on our hard drive.

This little technological crisis prompted me to start backing up the photos on my own computer.  I already had most of my pictures uploaded in one place or another, but for peace of mind I wanted to put them all in the same place.  I have a Mac, so I have little fear that my computer will crash or get "sick."  However, Macs are not invincible, and it's still possible for me to randomly drop my computer onto a hard surface or to have it ripped off.  To prevent a complete loss of my photos, I decided to upload all of them to an internet photo album so I could access them from another computer if need be.  There are multiple ways to backup pictures, but the main two that I use are:

1) Creating hard copies of my photos by burning them onto discs.

2) Upload photos to Internet photo albums.

I have many of my more important photos burned onto CDs so that there is a physical place where the photos are stored.  This method works, but I'll warn you that buying the discs will cost you money and space. Depending on the quantity of files, you may need a large number of discs to backup all of your photos.  A more popular way to backup photos is probably by uploading them somewhere online.  Personally, I use www.photobucket.com.  It allows you to upload large quantities of photos at a time, customize your privacy settings, and organize/personalize your albums however you want.  Naturally, there are many other websites with similar features, and you can choose the one that works best for you.  I would not recommend using Facebook or Myspace (if anyone still uses it...) as a storage place for your photos.  Those websites dummy down your photos, so although the photo is saved, it won't be saved at its original size or quality. Keep in mind that having your photos stored online can be both an advantage and a disadvantage.  On the positive side, you can view your photos anywhere that you have internet access.  On the negative side, if you don't have internet, you won't be able to get to your pictures (which is when a hard copy would come in handy).

I realize that the topic of backing up files isn't exactly thrilling, but I still felt obligated to bring it up. What some may view as common sense might not be so obvious to others, so it can't hurt to review this subject.  As I have said before: don't put all your eggs in one basket.  Always have your most precious photos backed up somewhere reliable!  If you don't want to use discs or an online photo hosting site, use a flash drive, separate computer, or anything else you can think of that will protect your photos.  Whichever method you choose, just make sure that it would prevent you from losing all of your important files in the event that something like this happens: