So how do you store all your photos...?
Reason for asking is, I've got a lifetime of photos,[ like almost 500gigs ]
stored on 2 external hard drives..
One of them has failed, so luckily they're all on the other one as well.
This is the 2nd one that's packed up on me..
Is there a safer way of storing them...?

m16d - 2021-06-19 09:25:00

Not really unless you print them all off. Just make sure you have any/all important files/photos/data/whatever stored on at least two different drives/systems and in seperate physical locations.

nice_lady - 2021-06-19 09:37:00

I don't, I have them printed. You can copy old photos, have them reprinted even, as in over 100 years old, but data? It doesn't last. Even the hardware changes, floppies, CDs and so on. And the formats as well. The operating systems.

lythande1 - 2021-06-19 09:46:00

Problem is - 500GB of photos is goin to cost a LOT of money to print. And it's going to be a HELL of a lot of photos to store.

nice_lady - 2021-06-19 09:50:00

Copy them to a cloud system might be helpful.

muppet_slayer - 2021-06-19 10:12:00

How important are all those photos? Ask yourself which ones you would be really devastated to lose, and then consider having those printed either in a photobook or individually (two copies of each, one set kept at a different location). Keep those electronically as well in whatever form you choose.

As for the remainder, it's up to you how you store them. You could be surprised how little you would miss some of them should anything untoward happen. I asked myself when culling mine: "When I'm gone, will this photo mean anything to anyone else?" It made things a lot clearer. I did that exercise after going through all my parents' photos, most of which were of people I had never known, taken in situations and places that meant nothing to me. What I have left now are family memories and important events that my kids and grandchildren will enjoy looking back on in the future.

Edited by kitty179 at 10:20 am, Sat 19 Jun

kitty179 - 2021-06-19 10:18:00

I strictly segregate photos and videos into those that I've taken, and anything I've downloaded from the internet. I don't backup movies for example, because I could just download it again anytime. If I'm short of space then they're the first thing to go.

And then, as you do, I've got multiple external drives as well as the internal 3TB secondary disk, and everynow and then I backup the photos and video I've taken to a new external drive. I pick them up in inorganic collections - got 1.5TB just last week from over the road. I probably have 10 backups of the oldest photos. The last thing I bought was an external sata caddy, I can just pop a bare disk drive in the top in a few seconds.

Then I hide the backup disks, there's some in the shed, some in the garage... I haven't had any failures, as long as you've got plenty of external power for those early USB drives with the double cables, and avoid Quantum Bigfoots...

gyrogearloose - 2021-06-19 10:54:00

A NAS with RAID.
IE a box with 2 or more Hard drives working together at all times. When one drive fails you still have all your data so long as you replace the dead drive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage
Or
A USB external box with 2 or more drives, works the same way (depends on some things)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-attached_storage

Edited by guardian_angelt at 12:18 pm, Sat 19 Jun

guardian_angelt - 2021-06-19 12:16:00

muppet_slayer wrote:

Copy them to a cloud system might be helpful.

Not guaranteed either, but photos on paper last as long as the ink, probably 100 years.

bryshaw - 2021-06-19 14:30:00

Unfortunately some cameras store pictures at 6 megabyte JPGs. You could save them as 200K or so.

trade4us2 - 2021-06-19 14:43:00

trade4us2 wrote:

Unfortunately-
some cameras store pictures at 6 megabyte JPGs. You could save them as 200K or so.

200 GB as the OP says they have at that file size would be about 33,000 Photos. Shouldn't really be any problem to store them full size.

nice_lady - 2021-06-19 14:59:00