Oh, there are those conversations that give me the most horrible, sinking feeling. For instance, one time a good friend called me a few days after her daughter's birthday party, which my children had attended. I obviously don't have the exact words we traded, but it went something like this.
“Hey Deb, I was wondering if I could ask you for a copy of the pictures you took at Taylor's party. I uploaded them to my computer and now I can't even boot it up and they're gone. The people we took it to say there's nothing they can do.”
Unfortunately, that really did happen, and it's not the only time I've heard a similar situation. It just makes me cringe, because even though I was able to give her the photos I took, most of my pictures were focused on my own kids, and didn't always include the birthday girl. And many times it's much more than just one birthday party that is lost.
You might be thinking, “Oh, I don't really need to worry about that. My computer is pretty new. And I uploaded most of the good ones to Facebook. Isn't that kind of like having a back up?”
My answer: No. Even new hard drives on new computers can fail. CDs and DVDs can fail. External hard drives, flash drives, memory cards … all of it can fail. And websites like Facebook and many others will reduce your photo to a smaller file size when uploaded, too small to print nicely, and you won't be able to get the original back from the site.
So, if all of these things fail, what's the best option?
My answer: Don't rely on just one. My personal choice is to use an external hard drive to make a shadow copy of my memory vault and then I also back up my vault to DVDs and store them in a safe place.
One of my most favorite things since I started teaching Memory Manager is the backup features that it offers. I love the fact that it offers more than one way to backup. And I love the way that it reminds me periodically that things need to be backed up. We all have those good intentions, but without that reminder staring me in the face, I know that I tend to put off doing it more often than not. That's how photos and those memories get lost.
What you choose to do about backing up is up to you. In the next post I'll discuss how to set up a shadow copy in Memory Manager and how easy it is to maintain. Then in the following post I'll talk about backing up to CD/DVD.
Until then, Enjoy!