Ways to Back Up Photos – San Jose Photographer Photos by Kim E
A few years ago, my cell phone was stolen while I was picking up my kiddos from school. I didn’t care about the loss of the phone. I cared about the loss of the photos. It had been a few weeks since I had saved my photos and I was so sad that those were gone. Since then, I back up from my phone every day.
Your photographs are your most precious memories. They capture moments in time that you can cherish forever. But what happens if your phone breaks, is stolen or your computer crashes? Those moments could be lost forever.
Here are some of my personal favorites for backing up my images:
Cloud: I love Amazon Photos for cloud storage because I back up my personal RAWs and am not limited to cloud space. The one drawback is that there is no folder organization/hierarchy, which is annoying but it’s a great system that comes with the price of Amazon Prime. I also love their “memories” feature so when I’m checking my memories each morning, it’s also backing up cell phone photos in the background, a two-for-one 🙂
Hard drive: A second backup is crucial so I use external hard drives for all my personal and work sessions. Images are organized by personal/work and then year>month. This helps when I need to find old sessions or those cute childhood moments of my kiddos. Also, try not to rely on one hard drive only. Your computer hard drive can be considered another backup. I replace external hard drives every 2 years and copy images from past years onto the newest one.
Printing: My third is printing yearly personal albums via Blurb because photographs should be printed, not stored away for you never to see! There are many wonderful ways to get your digital photos into an album but my favorite is Blurb so I’ll have to find time for a future blog post on Blurb Albums.
So if something happens to your photos, you can restore them from one of your backups. Hopefully some of these tips help with backing up your digital photos regularly.
Photos by Kim E is a San Jose Photographer that serves the Bay Area. They specialize in authentic fun photography sessions for businesses and families.
