I'll never forget that day even though it was 17 years ago. I was in my home. Looking out my window I could see flames coming over the hill. I could feel the heat of the firestorm and could tell that oxygen was low. Nobody needed to tell me to evacuate - I could sense the danger. I had about 30 seconds to look around my home and save something before it all burned up. What did I save? You know what I saved. I grabbed my photos and ran for my life.
It was the October 1991 Oakland Firestorm that burned 3000 homes. I was lucky. The wind changed the direction of the fire and my home was saved, however I have several friends who lost everything and never even had the chance to rescue something before evacuating. When you talk to them, even today, about what they still miss, they'll usually talk about their photos.
Now we all have digital photos stored on our computers. The odds are low that we'll lose our computers in a fire, but we could. Even more likely is the possibility of losing our photos due to theft or a hard drive crash. We all need to protect ourselves from a heartbreaking loss by backing up our photos. It's best to have 2 backup copies -- one on-site and one off-site.
How should you back up your photos? For on-site back-ups, you can use CD's/DVD's or external hard drives, which seem to be getting cheaper. After I make a "Year in Review" photo book, I like to copy all of the past year's photos onto a disk and put it in a pocket that I've adhered to the inside back cover. For off-site back-ups, you can copy the same disks and store them somewhere other than your home. You can also use Shutterfly, Snapfish, or Kodak Gallery for free, unlimited storage. Another option is to use a service like Smugmug for a fee. There are also other services that charge a monthly fee and automatically back up your hard drive every night.
If you don't have a regular system for backing up your photos, make a resolution to do it now before something happens to your precious memories.
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