Holidays, birthdays, vacations, and more-archiving photos of these memories assures they will be
well-protected against corruption, data loss, or accidental deletion. It will also free up much needed
hard drive space. Explore the different archiving options and get some handy quick tips that will help
you preserve your pictures for years to come.
Stay organized
Create a schedule for archiving your photos-maybe once a month or every 100 photos. Once you've decided on a schedule
that works for you, decide which storage method (or combination of methods) you'd like to use.
Check out Quick tips for organizing photos
for more helpful hints on saving your files and setting up folders.
Burning discs takes longer than simply transferring data to a hard drive, but it's wise to have extra copies of your
files for safekeeping. If properly cared for, CDs and DVDs can last from 30 to 100 years. If improperly stored, however,
they can be scratched and, therefore, corrupted.
It is also important to use a high-quality CD or DVD media from manufacturers you recognize, such as HP. Lower-quality
media may deteriorate over time, making it difficult if not impossible to read.
Keep the following in mind when choosing a CD or DVD for archiving:
Choose media that's compatible with your disc burner (check your product's technical specifications).
Select a disc that meets your needs. A CD holds about 700MB, and a DVD can hold 4.7GB (or 15,000 high-quality pictures!).
Label your media. If you have a LightScribe
drive, burn your photos to a LightScribe enabled CD or DVD, then flip it and burn a custom laser-etched label on top.
HP CD/DVD Tattoos
add brilliant color photos and graphics, and are highly durable—they resist water and fading better than
traditional paper labels.
External drives are compact, portable devices that connect to your computer. They can be taken anywhere and connected to
other computers for quick access to your images. And depending on the drive capacity, they can store many more photos than
a CD or DVD.
Flash drives offer up to 4GB of storage and plug directly into a USB port on your PC.
Because they're thin and narrow, they generally don't compete for space with other devices (such as a printer).
HP personal media drives
are ideal for large files, if not your entire digital photo collection (up to 400GB of storage!). They connect to
your computer with a USB cable, or can be inserted into the personal media drive bay included on some HP
desktop PCs.
To archive photos to an external hard drive, just connect the drive to your PC and drag and drop files to it (the duration
of this process may vary slightly from drive to drive). Usually, it takes only seconds.
Online photo albums are the best way to store and share your pictures on the Web. With
Snapfish (a service of HP) you can share individual pictures or
entire albums with friends and family, and even allow them to order prints of their favorite photos.
Make two disc copies. Keep one close at hand and one locked away somewhere safe (like a safe deposit box) in case
of breakage, data corruption, theft, or fire.
Print proof, or contact sheets, of images stored on each DVD or CD and keep them with the discs.
Take a free online class
in digital photography! Explore the many features of your digital camera, find tips for cropping and editing your
images, and discover new ideas for sharing your photos in creative ways.
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