Digital photo storage?

[New England Eeyore]

So I'm a digital camera newbie. Last weekend was my first trip with my new camera and I took a crazy number of pictures for a 3.5 day trip - I can see that I need to (and quick) figure out what I'll do for long-term photo storage.

What do you for digital photo storage? Burn CDs/DVDs, external hard drive, online storage, something I don't know about? I'm especially interested in learning about external hard drives - I don't know much about them. I'm not crazy about the idea of CDs because I'd worry about them getting scratched/broken/lost and they'd be one more "thing" that I need to keep organized and accounted for.

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

You probably want a few different places to store your photos. Online is good, CDs in a safety deposit box and maybe on your hard drive for the convenience of printing.
If your hard drive crashes most or all would be lost, I know my computer died and my pictures are in limbo until DH can remove and image the drive.
CD's, you're right they may scratch over time but if you keep them somewhere safe they should be ok. However we don't really know how long CD's will last. Also you don't want to have your only copies in your home on your computer or disk encase of a fire.
Online is a good option and there are plenty of free storage places. I personally use photobucket, others use shutterfly and I'm sure there are more. I'm not sure who has print and mail capabilities and the cost per print.

HTH!!!!

 

[PrincessNancy96]

I use kodak easy share software on my computer to store my photos.. Now, I have taken up 3 backup burned CD's... one goes to my mom's, one stays here, and one is in the safety deposit box.. During Christmas break the kids and I are taking all our photos out of the sticky albums, scanning them on and burning them to CD..
I also have accounts on winkflash and snapfish.. they have some good pricing too.. Which speaking of pricing.. I need to get my printer order download so I can pick it up tomorrow.. I need to finish DH's scrapbook for Christmas!

 

[New England Eeyore]

Thanks for the tips. I need to get the bulk of the pictures off my hard drive because it's starting to affect my computer's speed. A friend of mine has an external hard drive so she gave me some info today - I think I'll end up getting one.

I have actually yet to burn a CD of pictures because I keep waiting until I get all the old ones scanned or I organize the ones currently on my computer. How many pictures do you tend to fit on one CD? I just have this feeling I'm going to need stacks and stacks of them.

 

[kaddjr]

I have actually yet to burn a CD of pictures because I keep waiting until I get all the old ones scanned or I organize the ones currently on my computer. How many pictures do you tend to fit on one CD? I just have this feeling I'm going to need stacks and stacks of them.

If you put them on CDs with the intent of taking them somewhere to be printed, DON'T put more than 200-250 on a disk. I thought I would be smart and utilize the entire amount of space on the disk. I managed to get over 600 pics on one CD. Headed to my local CVS to print some of them. Put my CD into the machine. It was slow pulling up the pics, took forever to edit, etc. After about 45 mins, the machine froze up and wouldn't do anything! They had to unplug the machine to restart it. I was asked how many pics were on the CD. When I told them at least 600, the lady was Told me no more than a couple hundred on the disk or the machine doesn't like it. Oopps!