purchased an external desktop hard drive

[MICKEY88]

I have a 500GB external hard drive that I sometimes use to back up photos and videos. I edit the photos when necessary, and then I burn them to CDs. I
never use online storage, and when they're on CDs, I delete the pics and videos.

you are playing russian roulette... cds can also deterioorate and you will lose your pics.. I used to put all musinc and pics on top quality cds or dvds, and within a year or 2 some of the disks were worthless

 

[photo_chick]

you are playing russian roulette... cds can also deterioorate and you will lose your pics.. I used to put all musinc and pics on top quality cds or dvds, and within a year or 2 some of the disks were worthless

Yep. Discs will most definitely rot. That's why I say backup to multiple media. It's all going to fail at some point so put your eggs all over the place.