How to Backup Photos

Knowing how to backup photos will ensure that you never lose them. Having all of your photographs in one place will make it more likely for your to lose all of them if something goes wrong. Computers crash or are stolen all the time. That's why it's important to backup pictures. Here are some digital photography tips that will help you do just that.

Not too long ago I was in the grocery store and I noticed that my cashier was looking a bit down. When I asked her what was wrong so told me that her computer had died that morning and she'd lost every photo she'd ever taken. I shuttered when I heard her story, because I realized that the same thing could easily happen to me. I had tons of photographs stored on my computer at the time with no backup system in place at all. I knew I had to change if I wanted to feel secure about my pictures.

External Hard Drive

The best way to backup your pictures is with an external hard drive. You can get a 1TB USB 2 external hard drive for about $100. USB 3 hard drives are faster and you may want to get one of those instead. I just have a USB 2 and though it's slow sometimes it works fine for me. I have a compact travel hard drive that I can take with me when I go on vacations. I use this hard drive to drag and drop pictures onto it.

This is also a great solution because pictures can take up a lot of space on your computer, especially if you shoot in RAW files. The space your computer uses storing these large files will slow it down making it more difficult to run programs. I try not to keep photos on my laptop for this very reason.

I know what you're thinking, if you only have you photos on an external hard drive and not on your computer they're not backed up. You are right about that. If that hard drive breaks you are screwed. Bye-bye pictures. That's why you shouldn't have just one external hard drive. Use a second hard drive to backup your computer and all of your pictures.

If you backup on a second hard drive you don't have to worry about losing your pictures because the chances of both hard drives crashing at once are very remote. Make backing up your computer part of your weekly or even daily routine. Backing up all of your files will ensure that you don't lose anything important when your computer finally does die--they all do eventually.

Online Solutions

If you want even more security you can use an online backup site like Mozy. These sites will backup photos and other types of files for you for a monthly fee. It cost more then buying two hard drives, but it is one of the most reliable ways to backup your work.

If you choose to use an online service you'll have access to your images from any computer you use.

I hope that this article on how to backup photos helped you. If you're interested in more digital photography advice check out these digital photography tutorials.