Digital Photo Storage Suggestions. . .

We've been using Flickr for a few years now. I love it! You can store for free, but only for a limited storage amount. You can upload unlimited pics and video for $25/year, so that's what we've opted for. It's a service provided through Yahoo!. Here's a link: http://www.Flickr.com

Why not some of the inexpensive jump drives. That is what mine daughter is doing to some of hers. Hope that helps

I, too, would suggest the online storage. However, if you rather have something tangible, I'd suggest storing them on flash drives rather than CDs. They can hold alot of files.

When my son was 5, I got my first digital camera. Eventually I scanned the first 5 years as well so now all of his pics are digital. And with the dig camera, I have no reason not to take a million pictures since it costs nothing - I can take 50 to get a single shot that comes out well. And of course there is no reason to really delete the other 49! Besides storing them on my computer, I use a SimpleTech Signature Mini Hard Drive. You can get a 500Gb one at Walmart for under $100 (just checked online). A single CD holds about 0.7Gb, so this will holds the equivalent of about 700 CDs. Its small enough to store in a fireproof safe as well or carry with you. Since it is USB based, it will work on nearly any computer. You can always burn a CD from the photos when you want to take to walmart to print (though easier to upload to online service and have mailed to you or pickup). I also use a Seagate FreeAgent Go 500Gb external hard drive (very similar to the other but not as portable). It is basically permanently attached to my computer to store everything else in addition to my photos. Makes it a lot easier to switch computers too, knowing everything (taxes, letters, etc) are all in one place. Yes, I keep all my pics there too - I am paranoid about losing them so this is my redundant backup! Hope that helps!

We got a 320G portable hard drive. It was a little under $100. It's small enough that I can take it from computer to computer and to other's houses to share pics (like when family wants copies).

You have some great suggestions below, but I want to give you and who ever else reads this a bit more info... I have had FOUR external hard drives fail on me in the past two years. Nothing that I did from what the computer guys told me, it can just happen.... I have also had CD's that I have burned become unreadable by any computer. I have lost too many great photo's from both of these incidents.

I now use a web based storage site that backs my pictures up in 3 different locations. That way I should never loose them. I use www.zenfolio.com. They are a bit more expensive ($100 a year) but I also take photos for friends and they can go out to this site and hook up and print what ever they want a a professional lab, so for me it is well worth it!! Plus I can watermark the photos for copying reasons....

I print mine but want to save the files for later so I have the same problem. I like to keep them original size so that I can edit them and whatnot. So far, I've found an external hard drive to be the best storage device. It uses a USB port and once a week, I back up all my photo and music files onto it. They come in various sizes, and I think it's the best 100 bucks I've ever spent!

I just want to point out that CD's and DVD's aren't forever. They can be damaged by environement, writing on them with a sharpey marker, scratched, etc. You've gotten lots of great suggestions already. But I wanted to point that out. Everyone thinks b/c they have their info on a cd it will just be there forever, but just like anything else, it may not be when you go back to it years from now. I woudl suggest using "gold" cd and dvd's for back ups, they are "supposed" to last the longest. I use an external harddrive for all of my pictures, btw.

Did I miss something in your statement, or wouldn't it just be easier to read the manual and reduce the size of your photos?? I have been doing digital (post 35mm) for 10 years now, and 2MB photos have been quite adequate for producing all sizes of printed photos.

I upload everything to KODAK Gallery, and have produced prints, books, mugs & calendars. 2MB was good for all. You can also have them make you a DVD of your photos too.

Hi J., I too have a professional camera that takes quite large sized photos. I have had it 2 years and taken over 10,000 photos (pretty crazy - I know). I refuse to take the pictures on anything but the highest quality cause I like to play with them in photoshop. Also, the better quality picture, the larger you can print them. I believe I can print my pictures up to 16x20. So with that being said, I had to go buy an external hard drive to store all of my photos and video on. It is really great and easy. I bought a 1 TB one, so it will take me many years to fill that up. I love it because I also use it to backup my computer in case something should happen. It just connects to your computer via USB and works like a regular hard drive. And they are getting cheaper and cheaper these days. I've had mine for a year and I love it. I have a Western Digital which is a pretty reputable brand. And then all of your pictures are in one place instead of many CD's. I hope this helps.

I have opted out of buying my own external hard drive. I have pictures, music and tons of other documents that I want backed up. So, we use Carbonite (www.carbonite.com) to back up ALL of our data. It's $50 per year, automatically backs up, uses up little data processes running in the back ground. And if you purchase more than 1 year at a time, it is less than $50 per year but not much. I have had no problems with it.

I kind of like the idea of carbonite.com since they back up everything for $50, but right now I'm using Flickr.com to store photos only for $20 or $25/year. It takes a while to get them on there and organized, but the bonus is that it forces me to organize!

My digital camera has an SD disc in it that I use to store my pics. I have several of them. They hold many pics, but I like another backup as well. Most are also on my computer, but it is beginning to get slower so I may transfer to another removable storage option.

I also sometimes take them (SD discs & camera) to a Kodak kiosk at WalMart, Walgreens, CVS or the grocery store (whoever has a sale that week!) and burn picture discs.

Good Morning J., get your book out and learn to crop and re size your photo's. Which you probably already know how to do...lol I have two picture programs I use. One is Kodak Share ware, so easy to re size to 8x10's 4x6, 3x5, 2x2 and save them to a disks. The other is adobe photo shop. I haven't figured out their complete system though, it sends them a good size for sharing pix in emails. They can do a auto fix
If it's to dark or light.
Usually on your printer you can re size also.
My daughter in law has alot of photos on a flash drive.

Good Luck and God bless you
K. Nana of 5
I love taking pix of just about anything and everything. My hubby teases me about all my Storm cloud and sunset pix...lol I could make an awesome calender

You have already received good suggestions. We personally have an external hard drive that we store pictures, music, movies etc. on. It works well for us and is easy to retreive files from if we need them. Another suggestion would be to use DVD's instead of CD's. They can hold a lot more data than an CD and work the same so your routine wouldn't change.

I too just upgraded to a better digital camera (10 MP) and I started putting all of my pictures on my external hard drive in a folder just for pictures. With my old camera, I used to just take the card to Walmart and put the pics on CD's, but quit doing that. My brother is a computer tech and he said the external hard drives now are much better about not crashing, and so that's when I started changing everything over to just using my external hard drive. Hope that helps, and you figure out a solution soon!

What you need is a DVD burner. You can fit about 10x as many files on a DVD as you can a CD. We had this problem too until we got the DVD burner and now we have everything, music and 4 years worth of pics backed up on less then 5 DVDs. Plus you can do a lot with the DVD burner that you can't do with a CD burner. Also, go through your pics and get rid of the ones that have heads cut off or eyes closed or whatever that you would never print in a million years. You really don't have to keep EVERY picture that you take.

Hi J.,

I used to just back my pics up to my husband's hard drive across our network, but I prefer the security of having them in several places. Hard drives fail, cd's can get ruined, servers can crash. It may seem a little like overkill, but I use a 3 way back up system.

Every time I move pictures from my camera to my laptop, I upload them to Shutterfly via their desktop application (Shutterfly Studio). I like this because I can edit them in Studio and then upload them with just a couple clicks. Shutterfly also gives me the option of posting those pictures to a personal photo sharing site, so my family can go directly to that and view/print/save pics from there. Shutterfly is free (Yay free!), I have never had any trouble with them, and I like their print quality. You'll also get free prints for signing up with them and discounts throughout the year. I only print/album my favorites.

Every couple months I zip my photo folders and move them across the network to my husband's hard drive. Then about once a year I burn the pics to cd's and I have a dedicated location for those. It may seem like a tad much, but I have had two learning experiences with various backup systems and have lost almost every one of the pictures from the first 5 years of dating my husband. Better safe than sorry!

Try a jump or flash drive--the little thingys that you stick into a USB port. You can get one that has 1 or 2 gigs of storage, much much more than a cd.
Grandma D.