Monday, May 14, 2012

Data Storage Systems Digital Photos

One item on my to-do list is to tackle organizing my digital photos and printing out a few of the photos that I would like to frame. My digital photo collection isn't really in too bad of shape. Last year I started organizing some of the photos. I sorted them by year and within each year, I created a month directory to sort them by month. This method of organizing my digital photos has worked out well so far. The problem is I have digital photos on two different laptops. I also have a whole bunch of more recent photos on my cell phone and digital camera.
I also really need to back them up. I have an external hard drive that is almost full. I have a few thumbdrives that are either full or need cleaning up too. I'm thinking about buying a few new data storage systems. My external hard drive is only 250gb. That was pretty good sized when I bought it almost ten years ago. Today you can buy an external hard drive that holds terabytes of data. My external hard drive also requires plugging into an electric outlet. Today you can buy external hard drives that just use a USB port. Prices are also pretty reasonable now. I paid around $100 for my 250gb hard drive. Today you can buy a $100 hard drive with much larger amounts of data storage.
There are also many online data storage sites where you can store data in the cloud, including Amazon.com, Google.com and Nexsan.com. Some of the services give you a certain amount of storage space for free. I don't like the idea of depending on a third party website to store my files. If that site goes away, there go my files. It is convenient to be able to access your files from any computer with an internet connection though. A third party online data storage site might be a good idea to use as a secondary backup. It's always a good idea to keep an extra backup off site.

No comments: