Backing Up Digital Images

As long as your images exist only on the card or on your computer's hard drive, they're in danger of being lost. If this is a big concern while you're out shooting, the simplest solution is to use a digital wallet device to back your cards up to as soon as possible. Once back to the computer, though, you really want a more permanent solution.

It's not likely that everyone will burn a CD or DVD immediately after downloading their photos to the computer. That's why I'm a big fan of a second hard drive, whether internal or external (see Section 4, Computers). If you have a second hard drive, it's a simple matter to copy the images to it after downloading to your main hard drive.

If you want to automate the backup process, consider installing backup software. There are many good, inexpensive packages on the market. To make the process simpler, consider something like the Maxtor OneTouch drive series (www.maxtor.com), which come pre-packaged with Retrospect Express backup software and a button on the front of the drive that starts the backup routine whenever you push it.

Another option for backup would be to use an NAS device. NAS stands for Network Attached Storage, and means a hard drive in a box of some sort that sits on your network and monitors one or more computers on the network. The Mirra Personal Server (www.mirra.com) is one of the easier to use units. Load the software on your Windows PC, plug the server in, and tell it what folders you want it to watch on your computer. It will keep them backed up and watch for any changes. Perhaps the coolest thing about it is the ability to share any folders on the Mirra unit with anyone in the world who has internet access. Through Mirra's web site, you can let someone download files or folders directly from your server.

For long-term storage, though, you'll likely want to burn your images to CD or DVD. The choice between the two will come down to how many photos you shoot. Someone who shoots a moderate amount of photos may be well-suited to CD's, with their limit of 700MB per disc. Be sure to use CD-R, and not CD-RW, as CD-RW can be erased, and the whole reason to burn images to disc is to keep them long-term. If you shoot a lot of photos, you'll want to move to DVD. At this time there are two main formats, DVD-R and DVD+R. More and more DVD drives are able to read both formats, so hopefully you'll be safe with either choice. When buying either CD's or DVD's, keep in mind that the purpose is to save images long-term, for many years. Invest in good quality media by well-known manufacturers. Mitsui, Teac, Kodak and Fuji all have good reputations. No doubt someday these storage formats will be replaced by newer, higher-capacity media. At that time you'll need to transfer your most important images to the new format. We can only hope that will be many years from now.