pictures

I have a ton of pictures on my harddrive and I was wondering the best way to back them up. I thought about buying an exteral drive and copying them all on there with some of my other important files. Any ideas and I would be thankful. MR Wright

I have a ton of pictures on my harddrive and I was wondering the best way to back them up. I thought about buying an exteral drive and copying them all on there with some of my other important files.
Any ideas and I would be thankful. MR Wright

Hi Wright300,

Your own idea put forward is good, safe and easy to do.

You could go here as this is another option.

I myself run Ghost 10 image backup on this PC and Acronis 10 on my Laptop so all is backed up weekly as suggested.

Post back and let us know how you go.

kind regards,

I would not trust important photos and files long term to only the hard drive. The key point here is long term storage. I would be burning off to DVD or CD. In fact more than one copy of them. Hard drives are notorious for failing without warning. Also if you lost the media to fire, flood, ect, ect, you would have a extra copy. Put that extra copy of them in a safe place, not unlike a safety deposit box at your local bank. (a nice dark, temperature controlled place) Light and heat created them and can also make them unreadable. How long are you planning to save these files and pictures? Can you expect the Harddrive or Burned media to last 20-30-50 years? Bargain bin cd/dvd media is a bargain for a reason, Construction and dyes tend to fail and fade in a short period of time.( 2 to 5 years) There are some manufacturers who claim 70 to 100 years on Gold archival type media but the oldest Cds are barely a teenager and there is not enough experience to estimate yet how long they will last yet. Best practice is to choose DVD-RW material since they use metalic material to change the phase of light rather than Chemical dyes. There is always the tried and true method, put em on paper and store them off site. Regards Kaz