If you have a digital camera, print your pictures.
Memory cards go bad, hard drives crash, CDs scratch and expire. The only way to almost guarantee your pictures make it to future generations is to print them. Nobody knows that better than me. Over my vacation last week 3 of my hard drives got surged and went bad. That’s right…THREE!
In my case, I was able to recover data on 2 of the 3 drives – the jury is still out on the last drive.
Luckily, I do print my digital photos!
Your photos are one of the best ways for you to communicate with your family and future generations.
True, we might not know how long photos printed up on a Canon printer last, but considering most computers hang around a maximum of 5-6 years and many people never label the CDs they burn, a printed picture is your best bet.
A picture tells a thousand words, just make sure they aren’t on some hard drive somewhere that can get struck by lightning.
Technorati Tags: digital, photos, history, hard drive, crashes
{ 3 comments }
What do you think of using online storage, like Flickr?
Online storage like Flickr is cool and fun to use. But it isn’t as accessible as print pictures. Who knows where Flickr will be in 10 years? It could be a movie distribution site.
I can’t send my grandma to Flickr, she doesn’t have a computer and even if she did, she has no idea what Flickr is. But I can hand her a photo.
Anyone else have an opionion about online storage solutions versus printing photos? I’m still a ‘print’ guy myself.
I only print if I want to display a picture in a frame or use it in some other similar project. Back when we used a film camera we put everything in photo albums and we very rarely oen them up to look at them. We are much more likely to go back and look at pictures on the computer.
I’m also a big proponent of: Backup! Backup! Backup! Redundancy! Redundancy! Redundancy! A backup to a portable hard drive once a week, a DVD in the safe deposit box once a month, and an online backup to Mozy.com whenever my PC is idle.
Remember: An engineer doesn’t think that a glass is half full or half empty—he’s just glad that half his water is in a redundant glass.
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