Photo Storage--Photo Deleting Phobia!

[JLoane]

I'm at a point where I NEED to clean some photos off my computer hard drive, but can't bring myself to delete my old photos. I've saved the photos to DVDs, have scrapped what I want, and many are uploaded online, but I still can't bring myself to delete them.

Anyone else have this same photo-deleting phobia?? Words of widom to overcome it? In general--how do you back up your photos?

Thanks,

Jen

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

Jen have you thought about buying an external hard drive? I have one that is dedicated just for photos.
I know a lot of people store them in safety deposit boxes too, then if there is ever a fire or anything your pics would be safe.

 

[fireplug]

We do the external hard drive route! I try to keep it at the FD so if something happens at home it is safe


Squid

 

[DisneyCowgirl]

I'm EXTRA-paranoid, so I save mine on an external hard drive AND back them up on CDs or DVDs. I need my 9,000 pics of my son I've taken in his 2 1/2 years so far!

I also move stuff off of iTunes onto the same hard drive (those movies take up a ton of space).

 

[Raenstoirm]

I am one of those too. I make two copies on CDs (one stays home the other goes to storage in case of fire etc) and I back them up on an external hardrive (but they are known to fail), plus I upload them to a photo saving website.
This is only for the last 8 years or so though (since I have had a digital camera). Prior to that I just have the one paper copy of each pic. One of my goals is to scan them all and do all of the above for them, but it is one of those projects I may never get around to.

 

[JLoane]

It's good to see that I'm not alone with this dilema!

I think I'm off to buy an external hard drive and some more DVDs. When the pics are all backed up, I'm going to take the plunge and delete them!

 

[Kyen]

I bought an extrenal hard drive to store all my pictures. Everything was running nicely until I went to copy some pictures for family of an uncle who had just passed away, only to find that my external drive died! I cried and felt VERY bad because I had the only recent photos of my uncle.
The 'Geeks' at Best Buy were not able to fix it so I had to find another extremely bright computer person to fix it! He was able to recover all my pictures (over 17 000) but it took 8 months.
So please be careful and back up your backups. CD is the best way!

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

yes, multiple back ups are still the way to go.
I'm glad you were able to recover your photos.

Thankfully my DH is one of those extremely bright computer guys (he specializes in data recovery) so most of the time he can recover photos.

 

[UP Disney]

I'm in the Information Technology field. The recommendation is that you have it stored electronically in two places - one of them should be off site. The off site is in case something happens to your home or business. You can use CD's, DVD's, external hard drives, USB keys, online, your computer, etc.

I also recommend that you verify the media after you have placed the photos there. Too many times I have had to deal with clients that lost their data (not just pictures) because they didn't check to make sure that the burning of the CD or DVD worked. They ended up having a blank CD or DVD when they went to look for their pictures.

I have the same issue as you and have trouble deleting my pictures off my computer. My most treasured possession are my photos. I end up putting them in two or three places. I have been able to delete them off the computer once I know they are in at least two places with one safely offsite.

 

[UP Disney]

I am one of those too. I make two copies on CDs (one stays home the other goes to storage in case of fire etc) and I back them up on an external hardrive (but they are known to fail), plus I upload them to a photo saving website.
This is only for the last 8 years or so though (since I have had a digital camera). Prior to that I just have the one paper copy of each pic. One of my goals is to scan them all and do all of the above for them, but it is one of those projects I may never get around to.

I kept all my negatives before I went digital and they are in my safety deposit box. I was paranoid even back then. I'm in the process of scanning the pictures so that I also have them digitally.

 

[ColleenG]

I can't bring myself to delete pictures off my computer either. I like to have them there for the convience of it. I back mine to an external hard drive and to DVDs. DH says the DVD isn't really necessary since we have the external hard drive, but I'm much to paranoid to not have another copy. Now I can tell hime, "See external hard drives can break." I can't even delete my memory stick until I know I have them all backed up.

 

[Spinning]

I jsut had to do this....I take tons of pictures for our swim and dive teams for the past 3 years! Needless to say by the time the season is finished I have maybe 1500 pictures!
So I uploaded all of them to snapfish, created a group for the team to see....then I deleted all of the pictures off my hard drive that weren't of my children or their actual friends! Killed me to do it....
We also have 2 external hard drives. They automatically sink up with my PC. I think burn DVD's and also for the big stuff make a photo slide show....

 

[wenrob]

I also recommend that you verify the media after you have placed the photos there. Too many times I have had to deal with clients that lost their data (not just pictures) because they didn't check to make sure that the burning of the CD or DVD worked. They ended up having a blank CD or DVD when they went to look for their pictures.

Was just going to say this. I was going to do some back ups and decided I would take my older back ups over to my sister's house. I popped them in the computer and nothing, zero, zilch, nada. I had checked them but only on the computer w/the program I used at the time. So, as I spent all day making two copies of everything I took them to my DH's computer(he has a different operating system and different program) and checked every single disk. Lucky for me all those pictures are also on two external hard drives.
I feel you can never have too many back ups. Even so, I still can't bring myself to delete them from my PC though the time is drawing near.

I also keep my movies for itunes on my EHD and just make sure it's plugged in and on when I sync. I never seem to get around to putting those on a DVD but I'd be far less upset losing those then my pics.

 

[wenrob]

I can't bring myself to delete pictures off my computer either. I like to have them there for the convience of it. I back mine to an external hard drive and to DVDs. DH says the DVD isn't really necessary since we have the external hard drive, but I'm much to paranoid to not have another copy. Now I can tell hime, "See external hard drives can break." I can't even delete my memory stick until I know I have them all backed up.

Tell your DH to visit any number of Digital Scrap Booking sites and he will find stories of people losing all their stuff from an EHD crash daily. Seriously, I read one of these stories almost every day.

 

[jade1]

I bought an extrenal hard drive to store all my pictures. Everything was running nicely until I went to copy some pictures for family of an uncle who had just passed away, only to find that my external drive died! I cried and felt VERY bad because I had the only recent photos of my uncle.
The 'Geeks' at Best Buy were not able to fix it so I had to find another extremely bright computer person to fix it! He was able to recover all my pictures (over 17 000) but it took 8 months.
So please be careful and back up your backups. CD is the best way!

Yep, those are not reliable either, I have 2 down now and hope one day to get the pics off but who knows?

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

I keep telling DH that when he retires he needs to do data recovery just for pictures.

 

[boBQuincy]

I don't delete any images either, hard drives are inexpensive so I just keep adding more. I also back up the images to CD/DVD and an external hard drive (kept in a fire safe).

Storing files on two devices is a very good idea, if both are 99% reliable the composite reliability for two devices goes to 99.99%!