How to keep your photos safe

There are many different approaches that can (and should) be taken when it comes to data in general, however when you are a photography nut or happened to be doing this for a living, these suckers are a little more important..not that I believe any photograph isn't important since you look at the one main thing about these.. if you happened to lose the photograph, it is likely you can never get it back because you can't simply re-create it or 'buy a new one'.  What I am referring to of course, is the loss of all data that is stored on your computer, or external hard drive, or burned cd/dvd drives.  This can happen quite easily if you look at the major disasters such as a house fire, flood or other 'natural disaster' whereas everything is lost. Yes sure, you may have been insured so you can get that new computer, but all of your data is gone, and all of your pictures.   So I find it interesting to read how many people from this website have posted what they do to back up their photos.

Some of these people have mentioned online storage but not the majority.  With online storage becoming a very inexpensive way of saving things, I believe this one method will be certain to be utilized more in the near future. A good reason may be the latest invention of wifi on an SD-memory card making it that much easier to get your photos from your camera directly to your online account.

For me, the actual transfer from my camera to my computer is the first step. Then, because ALL OF MY COMPUTERS are using CARBONITE, I know that this will also backup my photos.  But since I typically do not want to fill up my hard drive with photos, and I will want to share some of them with my friends, family and the public, I will then publish my photos to my FLICKR account, using the RAW image mode for archiving purposes. Subscribing to a 'pro account' gives you unlimited uploading and storage of your photos so this is a no-brainer for the $24/year fee.  Remember if you are planning on using external hard drive and/or cd/dvd discs to back things up, you need to be able to place the media in to a fire-proof safe (or your bank's safe deposit box), but whatever you do, it must placed somewhere that you can retrieve them easily enough and is still safe enough from the natural disasters in life.