2 things that will keep your digital photos safe

It was mid-morning and my phone rings. It was [Heidi], a client I’d been working with for at least a few weeks organizing her digital photos.

“Holly, we were robbed this morning and they took all of our electronics. I’m waiting for the police, but I wanted you to know so you can make sure my photos are safe.”

My first question was “Is everyone okay?”. No one was home, thank goodness. At this point, [Heidi] had called the police and her husband. I’m not exactly sure, but I may have been her next call. Her memories are that important to her. During the call she said to me, “This is why people hire you.”

We sometimes think about hard drives crashing and technology failures, but having your memories stolen? That’s a whole new challenge. How do you guarantee that if your phone or computer is stolen, your memories won’t be stolen, too? There are 2 things that will keep your photos safe:

1. Consolidate all of your digital photos into one location. Between phones, multiple computers (new and old), external hard drives, flash drives, CD/DVDs, our digital life is everywhere. Getting everything into one place, even if it’s not organized, will allow you to…

2. Back them up. Best practice is 3 copies of your digital photos. My favorite structure is:

• one copy on the computer you use most of the time for your photos;

• an external hard drive that you can easily access if your computer hard drive crashes (or is stolen); and,

• an offsite cloud service, so if something happens in your home, your memories will be safe. My favorite cloud backup is Backblaze. For more on cloud services and why I don’t recommend your originals live in the cloud, read this: What I’ve learned about clouds and organizing your photos

Luckily, this client and I were far enough along in the organizing process that I was able to reassure her that her backups were in place and her memories were safe. I can’t tell you how thankful I was that I could give her that peace of mind in the midst of such a stressful event.

What are you doing to keep your photos safe?

Holly Corbid is the founder and owner of Capture Your Photos, where we help you to celebrate life, tell stories and touch hearts with your photos and videos. Need help organizing your photos so you can make sure they are safe? Let’s talk!