How/where do you store digital photos?

[Emmas Mom]

I used to transfer our photos from our computer to CD's but I'm thinking an external hard drive would be much nicer. What do you use & why? If you use an external hard drive how big is it? I have no idea what I should consider.

[mommy111]

I do computers and CDs. I'm not sure even how to use an external hard drive :)

[salsah]

we just save them on the computer and periodically back up onto an external hard drive. then annually we back up onto dvds. we do the same with videos too.

[mommylamb]

We put a lot of our picures on shutterfly. I like having an on-line home for them in addition to our computer and external hard drive, and I like shutterfly becuase I can send them to people, but they don't need a shutterfly account to view the pictures. With snapfish (I think) you need to actually log in and I have way too many usernames and passwords already so I wouldn't want to ask anyone else to set up an account to view my pictures.

[MontrealMum]

Just know that if you store them on CDs they will eventually degrade and prior to that you have to copy them onto another form of media. I want to say 10 years, but my brain is mush after the summer. Surprisingly, film (negatives and microfilm) last longer in the proper conditions than newer media like floppies and CDs. Digitization is great, but recovery and backup standards are iffy on things like online photo sites. I'd definitely want a hard backup in the form of a CD or harddrive copy. All archives have holdings maintenance plans, which direct them when to make these transfers/copies of older media.

[Emmas Mom]

Thanks for the replies. I think I'm going to wait for Black Friday & look at buying an external hard drive. Costco has one that's about $100 for 500GB but I want to see what kind of deals come out around the holidays. ;)