February 10, 2009
Tackle it Tuesday #142 Preserving Precious Photos with Amy
This week we are welcoming Amy Nabors of Ordinarily Extraordinary. We can learn a lot from her resourcefulness about preserving photographs digitally.
Hello! My name is Amy. I live in the a small southern town with my husband of 12 years and our wonderful son. When I’m not taking care of our family I’m working on my part time photography business, scrapbooking, cardmaking, sewing or taking photos of our days and blogging about it all on my blog, Ordinarily Extraordinary
I try to find those ordinary moments each day that make life so extraordinary. I’m so excited to be guest tackling here at 5 Minutes for Mom.
The computer files residing on my laptop (which is pretty much everything) have been taunting me to back them up to an external hard drive for a few months now. The busy-ness of life as a wife and mother just seemed to keep getting in the way.
Finally I had to make myself slow down and tackle it. I knew I would be devastated if my laptop crashed and I lost the thousands of photos I had taken over the past months. I diligently back up all the photos I take for my part time photography business, but I’ve been a big slacker with my personal photos. Oh, I do it every few months, but I really need to be more consistent with it.
Other documents, downloaded music, and digital scrapbooking files all needed saving to the external hard drive also, but the main worry was my photos. I’ve chosen to back my photos up to an external hard drive since I print a lot of my own photos. There are also online sites where you can store your photos as well. Every few months when I decide what photos to print I’ll upload those to a site that will store them and print them.
If you don’t have an external hard drive, they are readily available. If you can’t get one soon, here are some sites that have unlimited online storage as well as printing that have good reputations or that I have had experiences with personally.
Shutterfly offers unlimited storage and printing. I’ve not had any experience with Shutterfly, but they seem to have a good reputation according to blogs I’ve read.
Snapfish offers unlimited storage and printing.
Winkflash offers unlimited storage and printing. I’ve used them before and been pleased.
Scrapbook Pictures offers unlimited storage as long as you place one order a year. I’ve been very pleased each time I’ve used them.
I’m feeling so much better knowing that my photos are now backed up on my external hard drive. Yes, it took some time to sit down and tackle it. It’s not a quick process (well, at least when you’ve let it pile up like me), but now I’m not worried about losing all the wonderful moments I’ve captured in photos.
Each week on Tuesday, we are posting before and after pictures of a project or trouble area that we tackled this week.
If you tackled a project this week, just add a comment and add your link below.
Happy tackling ladies…
Written by 5 Minutes for Mom Featured Columnist: Jena
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Filed under * Feature Columns, Computers and Internet, Meme, Scrapbooking, Tackle It Tuesday, Technology by
Comments on Tackle it Tuesday #142 Preserving Precious Photos with Amy »
Maddy @ 1:56 am
You’re not wrong there dearie. My husband is a techy and has all the computers networked, but when the hard drive crashed on my computer, it was the devil’s own job to get back to the same place that we were.
There again, having heard about the poor folks in Australia who locked their photos in a fireproof box and still lost the lot, if truth be told, we have to hold those pictures in our minds.
Best wishes
PhoenixTheBloggingMama @ 2:19 am
This is a very good idea and something I need to be better about doing! Thank you for sharing.
Lisa @ Crazy Adventures in Parenting @ 2:36 am
Oh I’m so thankful for my external hard drive, but I definitely need to start thinking about organizing them better! Thank you for the great info!
Upstatemomof3 @ 4:15 am
We are often inconsistent with backing up our pictures too. We only bought a hard drive a few months ago before that we backed our pictures up on CDs.
L2L @ 6:06 am
Oh wow, I never thought of backing up my laptop, duh!!!! Guess I need to get cracking on that or at least bat my eyes at my DH as he has the know how to that, lol.
susieshomemade @ 7:51 am
Oh no!! No Mr. Linky?:-( Well, incase it does’t get back up today, here’s my tackle for today:
http://susieshomemade.blogspot.com/2009/02/tackling-tea-cupcakes.html
V. @ 9:41 am
I’ll be tackling along with you during our major home renovation!
Rita @ 9:54 am
This is something I really need to tackle. Great post!
Tanya @ 10:13 am
Even though we have an external hard drive, we still periodically burn our photos to CD and label them Family Photos Volume X. My husband also has software on the computer that will scan the CDs and that gives us a (searchable) directory containing thumbnails of all the pictures on every CD, so I know which CD to pull out when I’m looking for a specific picture. Regardless of your method, you’re absolutely right – back them up somehow!
Sarah @ 10:18 am
One thing to keep in mind is that while some sites offer unlimited storage. Certain sites want you to place an order with them at least once a year in order to keep your photos on their site. Check it out!
Grasping for Objectivity in my Subjective Life @ 10:21 am
Great tackle, Amy!! And it was a nice surprise to see your face when I pulled up 5 Minutes for Mom today!! Congrats!
Lisa @ 10:49 am
That’s an important tackle! I try to backup my hard drive every once in a while too. This week I tackled some taxes.
The Happy Housewife @ 10:59 am
I just backed up my pictures from my old computer, but still need to back up the one’s on my laptop. Thanks for the reminder!
Toni
Becky @ 12:29 pm
Thank you so much for sharing. I am always trying to get better organized with my pictures.
Krista @ 5:42 pm
In my opinion Shutterfly has better quality pictures than Snapfish. Snapfish had a policy that you had to order at least once a year…
Mpix.com is more expensive but their quality is about 10 times better than anything else I’ve found!
Kelli @ 6:09 pm
Having lost precious photos before we now have a removeable hard drive that serves as a backup to our regular computers. It’s kept in a safe place so we know it won’t happen again.
Faerylandmom @ 9:22 pm
I have used Snapfish for almost eight years without a single problem.
In that time I received one bad batch of photos, but there were no questions asked, no return shipping to pay, and I had my new set – pristine as usual – in less than a week.
I <3 Snapfish.