To remind you all to back up your photos.

[trixymalixy]

We've just lost loads off the laptop. Thankfully I had backed most of them up on cd, but there are some I haven't found yet and I'm praying they were backed up.

I'm spending the day ( and probably the next few weeks!) uploading stuff to Flickr which now gives 1 terabyte free to everyone. I don't work for them honestly!!!

I use photobox but havent uploaded for a while, will do it now. Thanks

I keep them on the computer and on the memory cards, I use 32gb cards and when they fill up I buy another one. They each hold about 5000 photos so it takes some time.

Definitely use cloud storage or some sort of removable solid media like DVD/CDs. I was switching files from laptop to portable HDD (got new laptop and traded old one in) and stupidly, stupidly stupidly was cutting and pasting rather than copying.

Got up, caught my leg on the cable and pulled the HDD from sofa onto carpeted floor. Impact was enough to jam the head (oh yes, it was writing at the time) so we now have all our old photos stuck on a hard drive we can't access without shelling out thousands of pounds though I still have it just in.case it magically starts working again. DH came off worse as I was able to recover bits from the laptop but he had everything just on the HDD.

conorsrockers snap...now am ridiculously obsessed with backing up.

Totally agree with OP. I hear so many people who lose their photos because they never think about the need to back up. They never consider the possibility that their PC will break. Ditto with smartphones. So many now lose their precious photos because they drop their phones or drown them.

My advice for smartphones is to use Dropbox and enable the camera upload feature. This will automatically upload any photos taken to Dropbox when you are connected via wifi. So for example, I take some photos...when i get home they automatically get uploaded.

For your home computer, if you have a lot of photos then I agree that Flickr is probably the best for free.

But if you are a keen photographer like me, your broadband speed will put you off uploading many. It took about 6 weeks to upload my collection to my Crashplan account. So I use an external disk which I have encrypted and sits in the boot of my car.

But the bottom line is that you must must MUST backup your precious memories. I hate having to tell people there's nothing I can do to fix their disc and that their photos have gone. The look on their faces is soul destroying. Don't be one of them.

The other thing about Flickr is that it keys you download photos at the same resolution you uploaded them. AFAIK some of the other photo sites will only let you download at a lower resolution.

I back up using mozy. It costs £4.99 a month and does 2 back ups a day from my computer.

Is crashplan better?

Ive just lost anout 300 pictures as the SD card in my phone has somehow corrupted itself. I'm going to take it to a shop to see if they can retrieve it but I don't hold out much hope. I could cry. Months of pictures of DS. All gone.

I use an external hard drive and keep it in our safe. Many of my better photos are also uploaded to photobox as I have made albums with them.

I think you're right there lucky. I have thousands of one year old dd and its mainly because its so easy to grab my iPhone and snap away. I do wonder sometimes if I spend more time taking pictures to remember in the future rather than enjoying the moment so I've been trying to take less and its working phew!

I take too many but the great thing about digital is that its easy to delete them.

You must be a mind reader, all mine on picasa and I am worried that if my pc crashes it will lose them. Thanks for the ideas all.

Where do you back up movies?

Good question ender, I have backed up my short ones from my phone on Flickr, but the max is 3 mins. I have some films from my video camera I need to back up too.