Keep Your All-Personal Photos Safe

Are you backing up your precious photos? Our computers and removable drives are full of experiences and precious moments. However, electronic media are not secure. Hard drives crash and removable media fails.

Disasters can happen.

Digital photo albums are vulnerable, and if they are not backed up, you will lose thousands of photos and a lifetime of moments with just one hard drive crash.

What are backups? Backups are just copies of our files that are stored in a safe place. Examples of such copies can be photos that are uploaded to a DVD and kept at a friend's house. The DVD could, of course, be kept in your own home, but that would be less secure because in the event of a disaster in your home, you could lose both your computer and the backups.

A few years ago, it was difficult to create backups. You practically had to be a computer guru to understand this backup software. Today, however, backup has been simplified with a number of software solutions and online services. Below are two main options for backing up your photo albums: burn them to a DVD/CD or use an online backup service.

Backing up to a DVD/CD

 Backing up to a DVD/CD is done with the help of a DVD/CD burner and software that can burn files to such media. As a rule, the use of such solutions requires more technical know-how. Backing up to a DVD/CD is a cost-effective solution. You can buy such drives and software for probably less than $100, and each DVD/CD media should cost in pennies. One such software, which has been around for a while and is used by many, is a software that has been around for a while.

If you are backing up your photo albums to a DVD/CD, please make sure you keep the DVD/CD in a safe place, a good option would be a place outside your home, perhaps a family member, a neighbor you can trust, or a friend. Another thing to keep in mind about DVD/CD backups is that when taking new photos, you should remember to update your backups. If your photo album isn't very large, it's usually easiest to re-burn your entire collection.

Backing up to an online backup service

 Like any other service, backup has also made its way to the internet. A number of websites today offer backup services for everything from digital photo albums to your Word documents. These services typically charge a monthly fee of $10 to $20, but some offer a more limited free service. The idea behind the service is simple: instead of creating a backup to a DVD/CD, you simply upload your photos to a website and make a copy there. The website stores the backups for you in a safe place, far away from your computer. If disaster strikes and you need your files, you can simply download them from the website or ask them to send you a DVD/CD with the files (not all of them offer the latter option). A broadband connection is required to use this option.

There are many benefits to using an online backup service. First, they tend to be very easy to use. Some offer software that you download and install on your computer. You then point to the folder where your photos are located, and the software picks them up from there. This will ensure that new files are uploaded to the backup service and that your backup is always up to date.

Examples of sites that offer such a service include Stream Last, which starts with a simple FREE storage of 10 GB (about 10,000 photos at 2 megapixels), and Xdrive, which starts from 5 GB for $10 per month.