Comments on: Best memory for your memories

By: Families and Technology » Five Tips for Avoiding Heartbreaking Loss

Families and Technology » Five Tips for Avoiding Heartbreaking Loss — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:58:16 +0000

[...] See also: A previous post on backing up your memories. [...]

By: Mark Sicignano

Mark Sicignano — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 14:39:00 +0000

Yes, printing 4×6′s is cheaper than ever. I think a role of 35mm is around $9-10 for 24 exp.

At digital prices, you’re talking about $5 for that same 24… and the best part is you only have to print the ones that came out nice, so it’s even less expensive… Yes, archiving to paper is a must also.

Now I just have to find the time to upload those prints. :-)

By: Phil

Phil — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 08:55:00 +0000

I’m really glad to read this, and Brett’s article… I’ve always backed up and printed out the best photos, but it’s important to be diligent about the family photos.

I’m also concerned about music… 25,000 MP3 files. The original CDs are long gone, sold off on eBay to reduce clutter. I’ve backed up my music collection onto DVDs, but if they last only two years… Yikes! Placing all these files on multiple hard drives sure sounds like the best way to go.

We have about 3,000 family pictures, with maybe 500 of those being actual keepers and not just similar shots or scenery. It would be worth the money to pay snapfish for 4×6 prints of those 500 pictures. It would only be about $100 and would give additional peace of mind.

By: brettdl

brettdl — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 05:35:00 +0000

Mark, I wrote an article on this for the Times a few months ago. Here's the link.

By: Mark Sicignano

Mark Sicignano — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 19:42:00 +0000

We've got a tape backup at the office. We back our server up nightly with a simple 4-tape rotation. Occasionally, we do a full backup to tape and take it offsite.

For my critical files (such as Quicken data, tax info, etc), I have an automated backup, using SyncBackSE, that copies the files up to an FTP server. Knock on wood, my hard drive doesn't crash at the same time that my host goes belly-up and takes the data with them. :-)

You bring up a good point. All of those MP3s too. It doesn't help that images and music are *big* files.

Maybe we just need to come up with a plan to "rotate" media that we've backed up on CD's to newer CD's every couple of years to ensure that they aren't fading. That will also teach us to try to be less of a packrat as well. :-)

RAID is nice, but that doesn't account for theft or physical destruction of that computer.

No simple solutions here that all of the possible disasters. Some combination of redudant copies on hard drives and occasional offsite backups, and don't rely on archival media. It's name is a misnomer.

Good to hear from you Todd.

By: K. Todd Storch

K. Todd Storch — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 05:16:00 +0000

You bring up a number of great points. First of all, not many people back up their data and now that there are fewer and fewer hard copies of photos being printed out, all those memories are going to be lost after a hard drive crash.

I bought a 250MB Iomega hard drive that I back up each week with my photos and music (your iTunes and .mp3's are at risk as well if you don't have the CD's...).

Tape drives, huh? I haven't backed up to tape since my PC back in the mid-90's. So, do I need to buy another hard drive and begin a backup rotation system where I keep a master offsite?

I do think a network server backup is a good bet, but what if the host company folds?

And, improved technology does pose a bigger threat due to incompatability in the near future. All the stuff I have on 3 1/2 discs are nearly worthless because I don't even have a disc drive anymore...

Can I just download this data and files into my own brain? Hmm...you know that is coming...

Thanks,

Todd