Storing Photos

[Flash Gordon]

Is it safe to save your photos on a disk. I'm tired of buying memory cards

Thanks in advance for any light you may be able to shine on the subject


Flash

 

[BobbyG]

Yes it is, very safe.

If you're looking to store large amounts of photos / data by an external hard drive then drag and drop..rops:

 

[Setec Astronomy]

I'm not sure what you are asking, when you say "disk" do you mean a hard drive as BobbyG suggests, or are you talking about burning to a CD/DVD?

Archival preservation is a big topic, but it is always wise to have a back-up copy of any magnetically stored data. There is some argument about the storage stability of optical discs but I think most of that centers around the physical and file formats. For instance, if you archive something to a CD in 1999...will there still be CD players 30 years later? Will .jpg still be a recognized file format?

IMO the best thing is to copy them to your hard drive, and back up a copy onto an external drive as Bobby suggests. If you have time, you could also burn hard copies to CD/DVD.

 

[Flash Gordon]

Yes it is, very safe.

If you're looking to store large amounts of photos / data by an external hard drive then drag and drop..rops:

Thanks Bobby :xyxthumbs:

I'm not sure what you are asking, when you say "disk" do you mean a hard drive as BobbyG suggests, or are you talking about burning to a CD/DVD?

Archival preservation is a big topic, but it is always wise to have a back-up copy of any magnetically stored data. There is some argument about the storage stability of optical discs but I think most of that centers around the physical and file formats. For instance, if you archive something to a CD in 1999...will there still be CD players 30 years later? Will .jpg still be a recognized file format?

IMO the best thing is to copy them to your hard drive, and back up a copy onto an external drive as Bobby suggests. If you have time, you could also burn hard copies to CD/DVD.

What I'm talking about are those Kiosk machines that allow you to transfer your pics from a memory card to a disk that looks like a CD/DVD

Please excuse my ignorance in this matter, and thanks for your response :dblthumb2:

 

[Setec Astronomy]

What I'm talking about are those Kiosk machines that allow you to transfer your pics from a memory card to a disk that looks like a CD/DVD

But you can do this yourself if your computer has a burner and you have a memory card reader...or you can buy a USB memory card reader for maybe $20...or find a friend who has this setup. Most computers these days have a card readers and burners of some sort.

 

[DLB]

Google "1TB External Hard Drive".

While you could archive them to DVD, it would take ~212 DVD's to get the same storage capacity (rough numbers).

At around $70, you are looking at about 2x the cost of the DVD's, but WAY less time and effort, plus you have them all in one place. If you are really concerned, get two and make a backup of your archive.

DLB

 

[jlb85]

Another option is to use a photo storage service, like photobucket. I pay about $100 per year for the pro version and I have unlimited storage and unlimited linking. The free version or photobucket is good for many GigaBytes of photos as well (IIRC). Others use Flickr, but I feel PB works better for non-picture-album-family-sharing kinda stuff, much faster and simple.

These photo sites will also have a printing service. So you (or anyone you share the picture album with) can order prints, posters, mugs, etc. Again, I have used Photobucket and found their quality to be impressively good even up to 36" prints.

 

[ScottB]

my wife does it at home, thru blu-ray burner, and it seems to work well. I guess we will know 10 years from now however.

 

[Flash Gordon]

I think I'll just buy another Memory Card

One of my 2011 goals is to figure out all this kinda stuff. I thought about just taking a night course or something

Thanks again everyone for your suggestions rops: