I have my pictures on my desktop hard drive. And since I have a laptop I am thinking of copying pictures I don't want to lose to it as well. I could easily lose 80-90% of my photos. :-) Only some do I really, really like.
I make backups of various picture directories to DVDs periodically. I suggested once that hard drives were better for storage than DVDs and was jumped on. But from my experience with computers for 20+ years or so, I find fixed media more reliable than removable media. So I've been thinking of getting an external hard drive as well. I'm just lucky my hard drive hasn't crashed. Hard drives have crashed on me in the past. About two. But most can last a long time. Long enough, anyway, until I upgrade to a newer and bigger drive and then copy stuff to it from the existing hard drive. As a former computer consultant, I used to recommend to people that they do tape backups, because, believe it or not, tape can last a very long time. Then it became harder and harder to find tape drives and I stopped consulting pretty much some time ago. I keep thinking I'd prefer to do tape backups. Maybe I will see if there are some tape drives still around somewhere one of these days. When I am willing to spend more on my camera hobby again. Film, transparencies, tape can last longer than DVDs or hard drives. I ran across this article a while ago. "IBM expert warns of short life span for CDs..." http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/01/10/73755_HNcdlifespan_1.html He's talking about CDs, but I think it applies to DVDs too, to a degree. Probably a large degree. Analog storage will last longer than digital storage. Or something that has more durability, than is similar to other forms of analog storage, will last longer than things like drives that have moving parts, or CDs/DVDs that can degrade due to dye. That is just my opinion. A slightly informed one, but not a highly informed one. Marnie aka Doe :-)
