• Tomorrow you might want to send a copy to her grandmother

• In 2025 you may want it for her Sweet Sixteen party

• In 2030 it could be part of the slide show for her wedding

• In 2086 you’ll need it to put together the 80th Birthday presentation
   

Will you be able to find that photo?

• Maybe it never made it off the memory card

• Maybe your computer’s hard drive will crash

• Maybe you’ll replace your computer and not copy what really matters

• Even if it’s still in existence, will you remember that it was file IMG_0483.jpg in folder C:/mydocuments/mypictures/2008July/ ?

What's wrong with leaving your photos on the memory card?

Memory cards are not intended for long term storage. A static discharge - easy in cold weather - can erase or corrupt all the files in one spark.

What's wrong with copying photos to hard drive?

Hard drives can crash, you can switch computers without copying things, you can lose track of where the important things - like baby pictures - are located. And did we mention that hard drives can, and do, crash?

How about copying all my photos to an external hard drive?

That's a good addition to having your photos on the computer's hard drive. Be sure to unplug the external drive when you're not actually using it. Yes, it's a hard drive and it could crash - but chances are it won't crash at exactly the same time as the computer's internal drive.

And those online services that give you free storage of your pictures?

Again, its a good addition to having your photos on the computer's hard drive. Just don't rely upon them as your only storage. Plenty have gone out of business, plenty more will in the future. Face it - would you hold onto a stranger's photos indefinitely if they didn't pay you? Plus most store a compressed (lower quality) copy of your original file.

To date, no online services have formal arrangements for leaving custody of your photos to your survivors.

How about burning CDs of all my photos?

That's a good addition to having your photos on the computer's hard drive. In fact, this is what I do myself. But I've noticed it's often hard to find a particular photo that I want. And I'm paranoid about writing any meaningful descriptions on the CDs. Ink from many types of marker can migrate though the label side and cause delaminating of the CD strata, greatly shortening the life of my "permanent copy."

Here's a better way to save and categorize your photos.

Our Memory Preserver CDs and DVDs come with a preview album. Kind of like index prints or contact prints in small book form. There's a thumbnail image of all the pictures on the CD. Both the CD and the book can be printed with matching title and cover print, so you can tell which book goes with which CD.

Our disks are designed to be printed on - an opaque barrier layer keeps the inks from leaching into the data layers. That insures long life.

Take home the book and the matching CD in a clear DVD-style case. Each set can hold as many photos as a great big album, but you don't have to do the work of creating a big album.

Bring in one memory card or several.  

Remember - you don't have to fill up your memory card before you do something with it! And you don't even need to use a computer.

Most dealers charge about as much as the old cost of developing just one roll of film.

Each of these little cases holds more images than a 300-photo album, and they are much easier to duplicate for the rest of the family.

How can you get photos off your computer's hard drive and bring them to us? I recommend the popular USB "thumb" drives. Here's a short how-to tutorial.