This past weekend I finished a task that turned out to be undeserving of my procrastination and left me with a welcome sense of relief. I made a backup of every digital photograph in my collection, over 15,000 images, spanning nearly 6 years from early 2000 through last week. It had been far too long since my last backup. It was easy, didn’t take a long time, and now I know that these treasured memories will be safe if something catastrophic ever happens to the hard drive they are stored on.

Most of the photographs I take are for the purpose of documenting our family history. This includes important events like birthdays and holidays but mostly it is the recording of everday life, the moments in-between when we are relaxed and just being ourselves. I think those photos, probably some that I don’t even think very much of today, will be the ones that will spark the strongest memories and emotions when we’re older. Digital photography has enabled the capturing of all of those moments cheaply and efficiently. But preserving those photographs is often just an afterthought.

Making a backup copy of your photos is a simple method of ensuring that they are protected. (Another very simple method is printing them, at least the really good ones – prints on archival paper and ink are very durable and can last a long time.) There are many methods of creating backups. What I’ll cover here is a simple method that is available using inexpensive hardware and software that you probably already have: a CD or DVD burner.

Chances are you’ve already got a CD burner. DVD burners aren’t as standard but you can pick one up now for under $75. There are other backup solutions but nothing as ubiquitous, as easy to use and test, and nothing as cheap. If you buy a retail boxed CD or DVD burner you’ll get some software with it for burning (creating) discs. How much data you have to backup will help you decide what kind of drive to get but if you’re not sure then just get a dual-layer DVD burner. CD-ROMs can hold about 650 megabytes, DVDs can hold about 4.7 gigbytes (4,700 megabytes), and dual-layer DVDs can hold about 8.5 gigabytes (8,500 megabytes). Divide how many megabytes your photo collection is by the storage per disc (for example) and you’ll know how many discs you’ll need.

The first thing you’ll want to do is get your files organized on your hard drive. One efficient storage system is to organize all of your photos by year and then by the date they were taken. For example, I have a main folder for each year, and then another folder for each time I transfer photos from my camera to my PC inside of that. After I transfer photos to my PC, I will sometimes rename the folder so that it contains the date and the name of the event to help me remember it. This is efficient because it helps me find photos quickly but it also makes everything easy to backup.

Start by creating a “data” disc with your burning software. Then you just need specify which folders to include on the disc, usually by just dragging them onto the burning software window. Add folders until the disc shows that it would be full, burn it, and repeat until you’re done. As the discs pop out of the burner (which should only take a few minutes per disc), label them to indicate what is on them and the current date so you know when you made the backup.

You’ll only need to backup everything, a complete backup, once. From then on, you’ll just be adding to your backup set. How often you do this depends on how quickly you accumulate new photos. Once a month or as often as you have enough data to fill a new disc is probably sufficient.

Storage of the backups is important. You want to make sure that the storage location is cool, dry, and dark. Avoid locations where the discs are exposed to direct sunlight, humidity, or heat and they should last you a good long while. Also, be careful with how you handle them – only touch the edges with your hands and don’t get any scratches or fingerprints on the bottom of the disc where the data is written.

Some manufacturers claim that their discs can store data for decades or even a century under perfect conditions. I wouldn’t bet on any disc lasting that long in the real world. It’s best to keep your backups for a year, maybe two, and then replace old discs with fresh backups. There are too many ways for removable media to be destroyed and the discs are so cheap – why risk it? At least pull them out and test them twice a year if you want to keep them longer. Pop the disc into your computer and verify that you can still access the data. Throw it away and make a new one if there is anything wrong with it.

Want to be really secure? Here are some extra measures you can take. Create two backups each time you make a set and store one copy at your home and another copy at a physically separate location (a friend’s house, perhaps). Then your backups are safe even if your house burns down. Want something a little faster? Buy an external hard-drive backup system. They’re fast but are relatively expensive (around $200). You also can’t expand them at will by buying more media but the convenience is hard to beat. Actually, I have one of these which I use for backups but only to provide some security between sessions when I backup to DVD (especially when I get lazy and don’t do it for a while). Want software that automates some of the steps? Image management software often comes with the ability to make simple CD or DVD backups of your photo collection. Corel Photo Album, Adobe Photoshop Elements, and Apple iPhoto all allow you to organize your photos and make backups easily. Or try Picasa for an excellent free solution (Windows only).

Comments

1. Gail on 2005-10-18 20:03:08 wrote: I recently finished burning all my images (photos and videos) to both DVD and external drive. It took days, but I feel better now. I do a backup of files every few months or so, but this was the BIG ONE, the complete collection. May-July photos alone were nearly 8 GBs.

2. pete on 2005-10-18 23:37:26 wrote: i am a MAJOR backup freak…especially when it comes to my pictures. here’s what i do: I’ll start by saving my digital camera pics in a folder called Set 1. When I have close to 4.7Gb worth, I burn it to DVD and then I start saving the new ones in a new folder…Set 2. So on and so forth. In the meantime before I even have enough to fill a DVD, I will burn then onto CDs as I’m going along incase my HD crashes before I have enough to fill a DVD. Once I have enough to burn onto DVD, I made 3 copies of the DVD. One to keep on my desk at home. On to keep in my safe should my house ever catch on fire. And one to keep at my parents’ house should my house burn down and my safe melts. :) It’s good to have more than one copy anyways because data burned onto a CD/DVD can go bad. On occasion, I’ll burn a CD and it will work fine. But then all of a sudden I’ll get Cyclic Redundency errors when trying to read something off the disc. So good suggestion on reburning the discs every couple of years. I think I’m due to do that pretty soon. Of course I back my stuff up on my flickr account as well. In addition to flickr, my PC, the DVDs and CDs, I also have a copy of all my pics on my Laptop. :) Anyways kudos on the post.

3. Busy Mom on 2005-10-24 11:48:58 wrote: Thank you! I was going to post that very question to my readers because I’m not sure what I should be doing n regard to backing things up.

4. Peter Norby on 2005-10-26 19:30:12 wrote: See, I have a problem at that first step “organize your photos” part … that one sort of hangs up everything after that. But, I am trying to keep them all in duplicate at least on separate hard drives in the mean time. The problem with burning pictures to DVDs is the sheer amount of time it takes to burn 50+ DVDs. I think I did this once a year or two ago when it was only 20 DVDs. The next hurdle is to make sure I still have a hard drive big enough to hold a copy of all pictures (and then a second one for the backup). Technology is barely keeping pace :) -//

5. pete on 2005-10-26 23:40:30 wrote: trying to burn 50+ DVDs could take quite a while…if you sat down and tried to do it all at once. but if you burn a DVD or two here and there, it wouldn’t be that bad. otherwise your collection of pictures just keeps growing and the number of DVDs you need to burn keeps going up. :)

6. mrscrumley on 2005-10-31 12:08:07 wrote: What kind of camera do you use? Your pictures are beautiful.

7. mrscrumley on 2005-10-31 12:09:13 wrote: Oh, uh, nevermind. Just found that bit of info on the flickr site. Duh.

8. john on 2005-10-31 12:50:58 wrote: Thanks, mrscrumley. For anyone else who is curious, I mainly use a Nikon D70 and sometimes a Canon S50.

9. don on 2005-11-11 21:21:33 wrote: I have about 50 gigs - I shoot in RAW… I bought a Sony 200gb tape drive on ebay. It backs up the 2 200gb HDs that mirror each other.

10. shimonkey on 2005-12-04 22:25:23 wrote: I just bought an 120GB internal hard drive + external enclosure for a grand total of about $50 to backup. Internal drives are a good deal cheaper and the enclosure has a little power supply, fan and IDE to USB connector. I was a little nervous about the whole thing not working at all but it works great, no hitches, and if I ever need to update I’ll just buy a bigger internal drive, put the 120 gig one in my pc and put the new one in the enclosure. I’m wondering though, do you know of any software that tracks where each picture went, maybe with a little thumbnail or something? That would be cool.

11. jeff wilkinson on 2006-01-04 12:02:04 wrote: I do the USB external harddrive approach to keeping a mostly-current backup of my whole machine, including photos. One important thing with that is to keep it off/offline/disconnected in a safe place except when updating the backup. Mine lives in a small fireproof box. If my whole PC suffers some major damage (electrical, fire, coffee), I still have that separate.

12. Mike Morrison on 2006-06-22 23:23:03 wrote: Great ideas here BUT I have lost a lot of old photos storde on CD because I thought the storage was permanant - IT IS NOT. The average CD appears to last 5 years, DVD’s 3 (RW versions a LOT less!!!) - do a web search for ’lost cd data’ I now keep my photos on 3 HDD’s - 2 kept on site one kept off site I am now looking for a more robust storage approach, I have too much data for online to be cost effective, & tape backup is too expensive (if you use this how often do you change the tapes - again they are not write once & store devices!!!

13. paul on 2007-07-25 09:51:18 wrote: i make daily backups of all this stuff. i would highly recommend folks do an automated backup scheme. it’s just too easy to forget about backing stuff up. and it’s kind of like insurance - you can’t get it when you need it. you can’t get a backup if your hard drive has already crashed. and that is a giant bummer. i hate talking to folks who are in that position - whether it’s personal photos or client information. all the same, it’s loss.