Please backup your pictures!

[NinJaBob]

A couple of months ago my hard drive bit the dust. All of the pictures since our kids were born are now gone. Luckily I had backed some of them up on CD's. We proly have from 04/2003 when my son was born until right before my daughter was born in 09/2005. The problem is that the files are so large on the cd's that the cd's take forever to open and some of them I had to do file copies through DOS because they locked up Windows. We got some pictures back from family members who had also taken pictures at special occasions. But all of our pictures at the park an the zoo and on vacation are gone. Anyway enough of our sob story.

After this happened I told my self that this would never happen again. As you can guess we were devastated. I heard a commercial for Carbonite.com on a nationally syndicated radio show. Carbonitte is like a dream come true.

I don't work for Carbonite but I do believe in it.

It's easy to install and easy to manage. You just set it and forget it. It runs in the background whenever you are connected to the internet. You designate what folders you want backed up and it does the work for you. Then at any time you can access your files from any computer. It uses minimal bandwidth so you can still surf and download stuff with no problem. The first backup takes a long time because there might be a lot of stuff to back up but after that it's quick and easy.

Carbonite runs about $49.95 per year. That may sound a little high but how much would you pay to get all of your pictures back if they were suddenly gone. You don't really know until it happens to you.

If you don't use Carbonite please use something.

Online Backup: Easy, Completely Automatic. Secure. Carbonite.

[Xero]

I use photobucket. Sounds like it's not quite as easy as carbonite, and it's only for pictures, but that's all I care about and it's totally free.

You're freaking me out though, I'm gonna go upload some pictures. @__o

Seriously though, if that was me, I'd be throwing a fit. I would be crying like a little baby and hitting the computer and yelling at people. I have hundreds and hundreds of pictures of Eli, taking and keeping pictures of him is a really really big huge deal to me. So I feel so awful for you right now.

It's strange, because I suppose you could almost call it an obsession. A problem, even. I'm not joking. I would estimate about 500-600 pictures just in digital, with a couple hundred more from disposables and he's only 14 months old.

I think the problem is connected to the fact that I was adopted at an older age and I have no pictures of my childhood, which leaves me feeling very empty about my past. I can't stand it that I can't look at pictures of myself and think "so that's what I looked like as a baby" or "wow look how much Eli looks like how I did" or anything like that. It's really depressing and leaves kind of a void in my heart, so I go absolutely crazy over taking pictures of Eli so it never happens to him... I guess.

[NinJaBob]

I don't care if anyone uses Carbonite as long as they do something. We were just devastated. I still feel guilty as it was all my idea to go digital in the first place the wife wanted to stay with the 35mm but I talked her out of it. Now we use the digital as well as the 35mm an we back everything up on Carbonite.

[Dadu2004]

Here's my horror story:

Backing up is SOOOO important. I had a similar issue with my pictures of Delaney. I wasn't backing up and my HDD drive...everything was gone. Fortunately, my mom had a lot of hard copies, which I had to spend hours scanning into my computer. My sister also had a problem...she had all of her wedding pictures on her computer and her husband was in Iraq. Her HDD died. She literally picked up her computer and knocked on my door with her computer in hand and sobbing. I was only able to retrieve about 50% of them.

I now use an external hard drive to which I backup everything on a monthly basis. I won't be in the place again. Unfortunately, about 90% of people who don't backup their data is because they've never lost anything. They'll have to learn the hard way.

No matter what you do to backup: online service, external drive, CD's...DO IT! You don't want to have to regret not doing it. Those memories are priceless.

[jayman]

Flickr pro keep the originally uploaded file (full size) and is $25 per year. Does not do video though... have a onetouch backup external hard drive for those.

[Music-dad]

I'm a backup freak...but I doubt I'd rely on online software for it.

CD/DVD, multiple copies, verify, store. relax.