Wow.... talk about digital explosion, progress in leaps and bounds. In just a space of 20 years we have gone from the Polaroid instamatic photos to digital cameras and digital phones that take pictures better than most average cameras. 20 years ago the challenge was where to store all the tons of hardcopy photos that had been printed and developed and this lead to having volumes of photo albums all over the house, today the challenge is where to store all those digital phones we now collect. I can't remember when last I saw a photo album...how passe it has now become. In the past we used to have hard copies so at least if the camera crapped out we still had the picture available but today we store all these in memory sticks, USB keys and external hard drives. These storage devices are now available in terabytes and people are rushing to buy these devices but the one thing they are not thinking about is how to successfully manage their painstakingly collected digital photo and media collections. If any of these multiple gigabyte devices fail, the cost to recover the data on them can run into thousands of dollars as this needs to be done by professional data recovery services. How can we prevent these losses of both digital memories and money if we need to recover a lost USB key or drive? Very simple IT 101 principle that we should always follow - Backup Backup Backup!!!

Always keep data in triplicates, yes three backups or copies. For instance we can do the following - - One backup copy stored on your computer, One backup copy stored on your USB key, external hard drive or Memory stick/compact flash/SD card, One copy stored online on a free image storing/archiving site. Another viable combination if you don't have too much storage space on your computer is - Print your digital photos and store hard copies, One copy stored on your USB key, external hard drive or Memory stick/compact flash/SD card, A copy stored on the image storing/ archiving service.

I personally like to use the online storage services. The benefits of these sites are:
1. They are free,
2. Extremely easy to use,
3. Can be shared with as few or as many as you desire to view your photos,
4. Easy way to publicly show case your work if your are a professional,
5. They are available from anywhere you have an internet connection,
6. Most of these storage sites will allow you unlimited space and bandwidth usage,
7. A few of these storage sites will even backup and send you copied of your photos on CD or DVD for a small fee,
8. If the site is a paid site then you have successfully off shored the management of your digital photo collection to a 3rd party,
9. You just have to send links to these photo to friends and family thus conserving bandwidth for those that have slow connections to the internet, instead of sending these huge 3 meg picture to everyone,
10. Did I mention that it was FREE! These image sharing or archiving sites are a good way of storing your photos and utilizing digital resources to the fullest.