Have you Backed up your Pictures Lately?

I get at least one email every week from someone with a sad tale about losing their pictures.  My first question is, “When did you last back them up?”

silence …

That’s not a good sign.

Monthly Backups

My system is to burn a CD or DVD each month of all the pictures I took that month.  I buy my CD/DVDs in bulk (50 disks - $25) and they come on a spindle.  I use the empty spindles to store my backed up pictures:

Yearly Backups

Then, at the end of the year, I also burn the entire year to DVD.  That way I can put one copy – either the monthlies or the yearly, at my Mom’s house for safekeeping.



There’s just one problem with this system … you gotta remember to do it!  I just took a look at my spindle of backup disks and it ends in December … this is March!  My Bad!  In the video below, I show you exactly how I backup my January 2010 and February 2010 photos.

Continual Backups

Meanwhile, I also backup all my computer data – including pictures – on a nightly basis using Windows 7 backup utility and an External hard drive.  I also use Carbonite to backup all my files to the Internet on a continual basis (whenever they change.)

Backup vs. Archive

The monthly and yearly systems I describe above are actually ‘Archives’ because the pictures they backed up may be removed from my computer altogether.  I know that I can find a picture from August of 2004 by going to my archive of disks regardless of what computer I happen to be using and what is on it.  The ‘nightly and continual backups’ I describe above are for disaster recovery purposes, all those pictures *are* on my computer.  I’m backing them up every night just in case something should happen to my computer.

I keep 2 years worth of pictures on my computer – about 8,000 pictures, but I like having instant access to pictures from years ago.  So, I keep the rest of my pictures (about 23,000) on an external hard drive.  I have Picasa ‘watching’ that hard drive so, when I view my pictures in Picasa I see all 30,000 pictures .  But I know that only the 8,000 on my computer’s C drive are being backed up each night.  If anything should happen to my external hard drive, I always have my archive DVD disks.

Show Me How: Backup your pictures monthly with Picasa.

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• Backup to External Hard Drive


• Move Folders of Pictures to an External Drive


• Moving Folders Among Multiple Hard Drives


• Backup your Photos to CD


• Backup Monthly to Disk (CD or DVD)


• Get one Picture from a Backup