Storing photographs- but not on a cloud

jim1999

wongataa said:

jim1999 said:

The general rule is to have one copy at home, where you can quickly access them.  This protect against your computer breaking.  Then also have a second copy away from home.  This protects against theft, fire etc.

For photos which go back a long way and are obviously precious, my instinct would be the following.

1) Buy a USB DVD drive that can write DVDs
2) Buy a large pack of DVDs (10 or 25)
3) Figure out how many discs you need to fit all of your photos on.  For most people that would be 1-2.  Make four separate disc sets that contain all of your photos.  Keep two in your house.  The other two sets stored at someone else's house or at a safety deposit box or similar.

The total cost is extremely low, and it's a pretty resilient storage medium.  The fact that additional discs are so cheap means that you can easily make 3/4/5 copies etc and store in more locations.  So even if one set gets broken, lost, damaged etc, there are others you can rely on.

The problem with this is DVD's take ages to write and they degrade over time.  There is a real risk that when you come to read them again in the future they will be unreadable.  Any storage medium can fail so multiple formats are best and for large quantities of data hard disk are better as they are cheap per gigabyte and hugely quicker to read and write to.

My personal experience is that drives are more susceptible to damage over time.  My main issue with them is that they're bulky and for the average person they'd need a USB drive to start with.  Buying four or more USB hard disks becomes very clunky.

At least DVDs are very small and can easily be posted, so it's no issue to make 3-4 copies and send them away somewhere.

I agree that the optimal strategy is to have multiple formats, but for someone who is starting out it's probably unrealistic to expect.

tehone

I would suggest that you buy/do the following
1) Buy two external USB hard drives (not sticks) as these will have greater capacity
2) I guess you are taking most photos with your phone at the moment? Use a "cloud" service to automatically save your photos and sync them with your Windows 10 computer
3) The external usb hard drives can be used for backing up your computer (the reason I say 2 is you can store one elsewhere away from home, just in case)
4) Upload all your photos to somewhere like Photobox (which handily provides another cloud based backup), and watch for a special offer that they no doubt run, and have them all printed (at the moment 500+ photos cost 10p a go and then 40% off the total for example) *** I'd do this one for the most precious ones ***

Ganga

As above have them all printed and then you can pass away the time in lockdown filing them and looking at them ,after all that is what you took them for 

CoastingHatbox

Hello Jo,

I think you are right to be asking about how you can store your photos. So many people don't give it a second thought. Might I ask why you don't want to store them on the cloud?

Personally I don't, because I know that if I'm relying on someone else to store my bits and bobs, I don't necessarily know what they are going to do with my bits and bobs. They could, for example, use them for training artificial intelligence. Or just decide they no longer want to store my bits and bobs. Or even turn around and decide they want to charge exorbitantly for doing so.

That said, storing your photos in iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive is honestly one of the easiest (not necessarily best) ways to keep your pictures safe. Cloud providers will be using server grade storage with resilience, redundancy and backups. Using the cloud to store photos is going to be the most resilient option for most people.

You say you want to store them somewhere 'secure'? Do you mean so other people can't get to them? Or secure like, you know you won't ever lose them? Or do you mean, where they won't be susceptible to corruption from malware?

There are two more questions really before I can make recommendations. Do you know how much storage you need? .. perhaps how much space your photographs take up on your computers hard disk drive? Have you set aside anything to cover the costs of photo storage?

in_my_wellies

A while ago there was an interview on the Today programme on Radio 4 with someone high up in charge of one of the big storage systems. He explained all about it and the interviewer asked how he stored his photos safely. His reply - in a shoe box - will always be there no matter how tech move on and will always be available to granny without a computer 

ballyblack

no matter how tech move on and will always be available to granny without a computer 
today's 30 year old will be a granny in 30 years and there will be no such thing as "without a computer"

stragglebod

in_my_wellies said:

A while ago there was an interview on the Today programme on Radio 4 with someone high up in charge of one of the big storage systems. He explained all about it and the interviewer asked how he stored his photos safely. His reply - in a shoe box - will always be there no matter how tech move on and will always be available to granny without a computer 

Until there's a house fire, or a water leak, or insects nest in the box, or the box gets mislaid sometime during a house move, or any of a number of possible ways that a physical object could be damaged. No method, cloud or physical, guarantees anything. Assume that files and photos stored anywhere in any format could vanish right this instant, and have a backup somewhere else. And another backup somewhere else still in case the first backup also vanishes before you have a chance to restore anything.

And make sure that anything that breaks one form of backup doesn't break another - e.g. if you have your files on your computer, on a USB drive in the same room, and in the cloud, what happens if a fire destroys your computer, your USB drive, and the password manager file that you need to get into the cloud account?

mgfvvc

At home I have a Synology DS218j NAS, which provides my local backup. Other models are available. I also have a cloud backup, so, if everything in the house is lost in a fire, my wife's photos can still be retrieved.

Nasarhayat

Use an external HDD. it's the best option for you

jonnygee2

A USB Flash drive would be your best option, in my opinion. Flash memory doesn't degrade over time and they usually come in good plastic casing. Also, USB ports are generally backwards compatible, which means you are less likely to have problems accessing these in the future. And, of course, USB sticks are quick, cheap and accessible - something like this would probably hold all of your photos https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ultra-USB-Flash-Drive/dp/B00DQG9OZ2/ref=sr_1_7?dchild=1&keywords=flash+drive&qid=1589373576&sr=8-7 . Buy a few, create some copies stored in separate secure locations, and you are sorted for <£20.

HDDs are a bad idea, they have moving parts which can easily fail over time. I've had several HDDs fail. It's not a long term storage solution.

DvDs last for a long time in the right conditions so are a close second. But the are sensitive to light and scratching. It also might be difficult to find a DVD player in 15 years time, and burning to DVD is a complete faff. If you are using DVDs make sure you use DVD-Rs and not DVD-RWs . Read/write disks should never be used for archiving because they are far less stable. 

Overall Flash memory is the cheapest, most reliable, and least fuss option. Whatever you use, you should really aim to create new copies / update every 10 - 15 years or so.