Where do you store your photos?

[John_SD]

For some time, I have been concerned about proper long-term storage of my photos -- the ones that mean something to me. If you beleve like me, that photos capture a time and place in our lives and that you'd like future generations of your family to have access to them, then you begin thinking in terms of storage options.

I myself don't have any faith that any of these companies will be around 40 or 50 years from now, or that today's hardware solutions will be viable. CDs and such? They are on their way out already. Flickr (or any other Yahoo offshoot)? Don't make me laugh. Dropbox? Let's talk about it 25 years from now. SmugMug? Get real. Google Drive? Please. 

All of them are fine, for now. I stash mine on Google Photos, also a temporary solution at best. But my photos that really mean something to me, I print.

Thus, I am using the only tried and true storage and retrtieval "device" that has stood the test of time. That is the photo album. Don't laugh. I have family photo albums chock full of black-and-whites from the early 1930s onward. And I am **bleep** glad I have them. There is no hardware to fail. No company to pull the plug. No technology that will fall by the wayside. For many, photo albums may be a thing of the past. For me, they contain generations of my family.

What about for you? Where do you store the photos that mean the most to you?

[TCampbell]

---

@inkjunkie wrote:

Years back I relied on tape drives. Nightly back ups using 5 different tapes. My EX often worked from home. One night she picked up a virus of some sort, took out the machine.. This machine was a complete SCSI machine. As luck would have it the SCSI card went belly up at the same time. The replacement SCSI card dould not "see" the tape drive.

---

I have a similar story about tape backups.  I had a SCSI tape drive and made regular backups (this is years ago).  I had a drive failure and wasn't worried since I regularly made tape backups.

Once I replaced the drive, I couldn't get the tape drive to do a restore (it could backup... just not restore).  So I phoned support.

This is where you learn about "testing" your restore process...

Turns out (and I couldn't belive this was real) they told me their software supports the tape drive for purposes of making BACKUPS... but they do NOT support the drive for purposes of doing a RESTORE.

This is so stupid that I was sure I was misunderstanding something (when something does not make sense... it usually means you are missing information)... we went round and round before it was absolutely confirmed to me that their software could NOT do a restore of their own backup... period. This wasn't a problem with a defective tape, a defective tape drive, or even a software bug... it was that they literally never bothered to implement a restore process for that particular drive (their documentation claimed it was a "supported" drive which is why I went with that solution).  

I also asked if they used any industry standard format such that I mgiht be able to use something else to do the restore... nope!

So I lost all that data and NOW I verify that backup software can both backup AND restore.  

[cicopo]

I gave up using "back up" software for a similar reason. I plain & simply make copies on my USB drives, & when a desktop drive fills up I print a screen grab of it's contents which goes into the box that drive ends up in on my shelf. The box comes from the new drive I replaced it with. Too many copies is better than no file.  

[Waddizzle]

---

@cicopo wrote:

I gave up using "back up" software for a similar reason. I plain & simply make copies on my USB drives, & when a desktop drive fills up I print a screen grab of it's contents which goes into the box that drive ends up in on my shelf. The box comes from the new drive I replaced it with. Too many copies is better than no file.  

---

If you use Microsoft Windows, then I suggest that you give SyncToy are look.  It’s free.  It’s fast.  I use it to run “batch” backups to multiple locations when I import photos from a camera.

[shadowsports]

I use an 8TB NAS that is backed up locally.  I also use Amazon Photos and Google Drive.     

Back up software is good for disaster recovery, Acronis, Macrium (windows guy)

[ebiggs1]

B from B,

I don't do backups, well in the real sense of the word anyway. All the photos go onto one of the 5 external HD's after LR.  After I retired I stopped keeping jobs (guaranteed) for 6 months.  Actually I kept them until I ran out of room on a backup drive usually well more than 6 months.  There was always two copies of every photo.

The big problem is there are so many it becomes impossible to even go through them.  And it is ever growing daily!  I had no idea it would come to this after retirement.  I think pulling the plug is the answer.  Prints were made of the ones wanted at the time. 

[RobertTheFat]

Ernie and John,

Before you place too much confidence in printing as a long-term storage methodology, look into how many town governments in the U.S. have had all their records destroyed by fire. And into the number of companies that ceased to exist on September 11, 2001 because their backups weren't in order.

[JacoMedia0113]

You can make one print with like 50 pictures on it. Ive done that in the past and its pretty fun

[Mr_Fusion]

I'm agreeing with Robert here. 

First paper is not an end all answer as it too has its own problems. Paper will become brittle and ink fades. Most inks use dyes for their colors. Look at your favorite old denim jeans for why dyes are not a first choice. Then add in the cost of printing each picture. depending on the machine, 8 X 10s will cost you roughly $1 - $2 per page by the time you add in paper, ink, and machine. Plus time. Then there is the physical size, moisture, heat, hungry bugs, etc. as long term storage hazards. While synthetic materials offer longer term storage options, they are expensive and not as high quality.

In the future I assume that someone will develop a file format that replaces jpg and tiff. Because of the vast number of files out there, any new file system will also include some backward compatibly or easy to transfer mechanism. No future system could ever gain a foothold if it orphaned trillions of files.

[cicopo]

On lots of hard drives. Way back around 2000 I had already started worrying about this & to date there is no real answer when it comes to LONG term storage. Mediums change & the devices to read them vanish as new tech comes along. VCR's & floppy drives etc are long gone & CD's DVD's etc will be too along with the players that used them. Even file systems used change so every so often it's necessary to back up a full older drive to a newer drive using the latest file system. As for prints we don't know their lifespan either. They aren't real photos like I made in the darkroom. They are dye or ink sprayed onto a special paper but it's also not the photo paper our ancestors bought. It was the negatives that really stood the test of time if looked after properly & digital files simply may not make it long term. 

[JacoMedia0113]

I have had the exact same concerns. What I did was bought a simple seagate 4 terabyte external hard drive. Then created a folder called photos. Inside of that I put film and digital since I shoot both. Inside digital is the year and inside of that is the month and then inside of that is the day number and a very short description. Inside of that is 2 folders named edited and original placing all the photos in original folder and then select/edited photos in the edited folder. You can also skip putting the year month day thing and just put the date in numbers (ex. 5/12/17) with a short description. It depends how much you shoot.