Film Strip

Years ago you would drop your film off to be developed and along with your developed pictures you would get the negatives. Some of us still have that drawer in the house with numerous envelopes full of negatives. That day and age is long past us; now we have hundreds to thousands of images from our digital cameras sitting on our computer hard drives.

Do you back these images up?
How important are these images (memories) to you and your loved ones?

DVD burners are relatively cheap these days, at a minimum you should put a reoccurring event on your calendars to back up these memories.

A more convenient solution is using network-attached storage devices or external hard drives. Take some time to review the benefits of adding one or more of these devices to your home infrastructure. My preference is the external hard drive. I personally own the Western Digital MyBook – 500GB and have been very happy with it.

Remember, adding these devices still doesn’t ensure your files are protected from losses (i.e. hardware failures). You still need a viable backup scheme. I have a copy of all my important files (i.e. images, music, videos, etc.) on my external drive and my internal hard drive. In the near future, I will purchase a second MyBook and keep both of them synced.

There is another benefit to the external hard drive, I can take it with me to the homes of my friends and families and ‘bore’ them with my latest vacation photos.