Archival Gold DVDs

In my other life or increasingly, my former life, I was a photographer. So, I get asked a lot about how to store digital photos.  Since so many of us are taking digital photos of our children, I thought this might prove of interest to you.

Here is what I do:

I make 2 backups of everything. EGADS! (I know, I know). But, I do. In fact, if I were really smart I would have 3 backups (which is what I am going to recommend to you).

1. I have a dedicated hard drive for my photos. Hard drives go bad though so you can’t depend upon this as your only storage. Case in point, I lost one of my photo hard drives a few months ago. Thankfully, Mac Concierge recovered all my data for a very fair price.
2. Secondly, I copy all the images to archival gold DVDs. The Archival Gold are supposed to be able to store your images for more than 100 years. Don’t forget a Safe Pen for writing on the DVDs. Regular pens or markers can destroy a DVD or CD due to their solvents and alcohols.
3. What I should do- but don’t….is have an online backup system like iPhoto, Migratr or any of the reasonably priced online storage systems.

Happy Shooting!

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