Photo-courtesy-of-zcreem-via-Flickr
I have over 10 years of family photos and videos that mean so much to my wife and I and I’m not sure what we would do if we ever lost them. These include, pictures of the births of our kids, videos of their birthdays, family outings, and other moments, big and small. All of these pictures and videos mean a lot to us, but there are some pictures and videos that stick out to me to this day. The pictures I took when my now 15 year-old daughter started kindergarten, for example. I remember that day like it was yesterday: how excited she was to start school, how she waited by the front door for my wife and I to walk her to the bus, waving bye to her as she made her journey out into the world for the first time without us.
We have home videos of every Christmas from the time our oldest daughter was four and every year since. Video archives that go all the way up to last Christmas, where all three kids were getting excited over what Santa delivered while they were sleeping. These are memories that could never be replaced, and I make sure that I have multiple backups just in case one of my hard drives decides it wants to fail on me.
A lot of the aforementioned moments occurred before the dawn of digital cameras, and were captured on film. If these pictures were ever lost, I don’t even know many weeks it would take to rescan them. My wife and I are picture fanatics. The thousands of pictures we have backed up on the cloud have been scanned over many years, so I am vigilant about doing monthly back ups. Who wants to spend weeks, or even months, recreating lost documents and memories?
Also, losing personal documents and data like pictures, passwords, resumes, and important scanned documents such as social security cards and birth certificates would be a total nightmare. These are documents that I scanned many many years ago, since that time we have moved quite a bit. Trying to find where and what boxes these documents are in would be a hassle.
You never want to go any longer than a month without a backup, especially if you have a lot of personal data on your computer. Waiting too long will just cause you headaches and, possibly, heartbreaks.
Rob Babiak is the co-founder and author of Look What Mom Found…and Dad too, a blog about parenting and family-centric products.
Pingback: Melinda
Pingback: Kimberly Brinton
My husband backs up our photos. But I also have them printed into 4x6s and photobooks. I would be heartbroken if I lost my memories.
Thank you for posting this! I know I would be devastated if I lost everything. My pictures mean the world to me.
I know what you mean! I have pictures from 1997 to now. over 10,000 pics! I would cry for a very very long time if I lost them!
Backing up data is so important. We’ve lucked out when hard drives die… we have MOST stuff backed up regularly so we lose only a little bit… not as devastating!
Pingback: Throttling and Its Effect on Backup
I have a backup drive where I keep all my photos and videos. I want to put them on DVD as well for an extra backup.
Ever since I got a DSLR I have thousands of pics, making sure they are backed up is super important!
Pingback: Nina Say
This sounds like a great way to backup. I’m off to look into it!
Good reminder! I keep putting off backing up my pictures and videos and if my hard drive went now I would be so lost. Just left with whatever I’ve shared online. Ugh. I need to put them on a backup drive and a disc for sure.
I needed this reminder. we have not backed up any of our pictures in so long. I would be devastated if we lost them!
Great article. I use a program that reminds me every 28 days, so I never forget. I am also a picture and video fanatic and would cry for weeks, months heck maybe years if I lost all the precious moments of my children.
Pingback: Kim Delatorre
Pingback: Nichol
Pingback: Beeb Ashcroft
Pingback: Backing Up Your Files In The Cloud Now
Pingback: How Cloud Back Up Makes Setting Up a New Computer Easy
Pingback: Cloud Storage Means Scalable Storage
Its like you read my mind! You appear to know a lot about this,
like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you can do with a few pics to drive the message home a little bit, but other than that,
this is magnificent blog. A fantastic read. I will definitely be back.