Digital storage solutions

NEVER lose your digital photos again!

I’m sure we’ve all had that moment where we’ve dropped our phone down the toilet or in the bath and had to say goodbye to hundreds of happy memories in photographic form – never to be seen again. There’s always an excuse to back them up tomorrow or look into it at the weekend.

Even as a professional photographer, I only hold on to client’s images for 1 year before I run out of space for my more recent work. It’s so important to back everything up before they’re lost to a digital disaster!

Here are some tips on how to go about saving them.

1. Recordable media

Not the best long-term solution, but a small way to keep them safe whilst you research long term solutions. SD cards, CDs and DVDs can all be the answer, but it does mean that things can get mixed up, lost or damaged. So have a think about moving these elsewhere if you have them stored like this currently!

2. External hard drives

You can copy files right across from your computer to an external drive – voila! You have your second storage option and backed them up from your PC or computer. Please be aware that these can also fail, which leads me onto point 3…

3. Save or store them in 3 places

I read this somewhere once, that it’s good to save them in 3 separate places so that if one of them fails, you have 2 other spaces that you saved them to. One of them is actually a relative’s house. I have nightmares about house fires and losing everything to the flames so backing them up in a different location is always a good idea.

4. In the cloud

This doesn’t literally mean in the sky, but it does make for an excellent storage solution. You can even set this automatically now from most smart phones which backs up any photos you take instantly or when you’re next connect to WiFi. There are a huge number of options but some big names that spring to mind are Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft One Drive and plenty of mobile apps!

5. Print them out

If you’ve got something really special or memories you just can’t be without, you could of course print them out (and make copies!). Making a lovely album is always so lovely to look back through later on or you could even print some and hang them on the wall, which is my number one go-to…why spend all that money paying for a photoshoot, only to leave them collecting cyber dust?! Get those beautiful images on your walls for everyone to see :)

Maybe you’ve cracked the code and have an amazing way of storing your images? Feel free to share them with me!