[Neil]

What to do with all these pics!!!!!??????

There are gobs and gobs of pics on my puter and I don't want to get rid of them, since most are in my photobucket. I have been storing them on jump drives. Is this the best way to go?

And what about printing them off and putting them in albums? Is there an economical way to this without going broke?

Just looking for thoughts, ideas, unique things that people are doing.

 

[ryan_long_01]

What to do with all these pics!!!!!??????

There are gobs and gobs of pics on my puter and I don't want to get rid of them, since most are in my photobucket. I have been storing them on jump drives. Is this the best way to go?

And what about printing them off and putting them in albums? Is there an economical way to this without going broke?

Just looking for thoughts, ideas, unique things that people are doing.

External hard drives with MASSIVE amounts of storage are getting very cheap nowadays. This is a good solution to storing MP3s, pictures, videos, etc. without eating up a ton of space on your main hard drive. I wouldn't trust jump drives for anything more than transporting a file from my home computer to work or something like that...they are pretty notorious for failing, as my students found out time and time again when I was a grad student/TA. Don't have your only copy of anything on a jump drive...having them on photobucket also is a good plan.

If you print them yourself, you will pay a lot for ink and paper, and unless you have a top-dollar printer, the quality won't be like that of an actual photo lab print, and they may fade or otherwise not last as long. You can take your images to pretty much anyplace that offers film developing and have prints made from them, or you can send them off to an internet-based company to do the same thing. I had a bunch of portfolio pictures printed this way once. If a lot of your images are low-resolution jpg files pulled off the web, you might have a hard time getting a quality 4x6 or 5x7 print. If they are high-res photos taken right off of a digital camera, you can get great looking prints made.

I would probably put all of them on an external hard drive and back them up to either a hosting site like photobucket or by burning DVDs. I'd then choose the ones I REALLY wanted prints of, and have those printed through a website where you upload photos and get prints via USPS or FedEx a few days later.

 

[Baker]

Why not just store them on CD's?
That way you can access them almost anywhere.

 

[crxfisher]

I think the average life of a burned CD is like 5 years. I wouldn't trust those for permanent storage. And burned DVD's are less. I've been trying to figure out the answer to this same question. I still don't know what to do. For now I just have stuff on at least two different computers and some important stuff on a server at a remote location.

 

[SETI20]

Solid state is the safest bet. But also the most expensive.

I've done a study on this, and my prediction is that harddrives will be non-existent in 10 years.
A couple of years ago a 16Meg flashdisk set you back as much as a multi-gig harddrive. Same money will buy you a 2 gig flash card today.
We saw the same trend in harddrives about 6 or 7 years ago.
Back then a gig harddrive was considered overkill. I'm currently using 2x200Gig and I'm cramped for space.

Good quality DVD's will last a good time too. Blueray is also a medium worth looking into. Altho also expensive.

As for your current dilemma.
Just go to a random computer store and buy a 100Gig external harddrive.
I shoot alot of pictures...so I'm opting for a 200G version. But "average" users will take their time filling up 100G.

 

[Neil]

Thanks.

 

[Neil]

Just bought a 250gig. $140.

 

[Penz]

That the way

I got me too a 250 gigs!

 

[SETI20]

Not a bad price. Alot cheaper than here. Is it just the HD or did it come with a case?

 

[FooFighter]

I got my 200gig for $120.

 

[Neil]

with case. It's an external hd

 

[SETI20]

Not a bad price at all then.

 

[Paul]

i like to take my pics from a memory stick to the local wal mart or walgreens and have them printed off and put them in an album

so i have somethign to remember when im older

 

[xJamesX]

try newegg.com I got a 250G for $100, I just bought an internal 7200rpm internal drive for $85 and bought an external case for $15 works like a charm. Mine is almost full but thats because I have a bunch of movies and such on it.

-James-

 

[daveb91]

Wow i didnt know cds have a "life" to them so I should move my pics to something else?

 

[ryan_long_01]

Wow i didnt know cds have a "life" to them so I should move my pics to something else?

I wouldn't have my only backup on CD...I've definitely had CDs fail over time. My friend burned me some audio or MP3 data CDs once (I forget which) on name brand (Sony) blanks, and the metallic layer actually started delaminating from the rest of the disc, which is the most common way that they fail. These CDs spent some time in the car being exposed to temperature extremes and direct sunlight, which no doubt accelerated the process (this happened inside of a year) -- but it can happen. Given that these were name-brand discs and that I have had cheaper discs last much longer under the same conditions, I'd say he got a bad batch of CD-Rs. Storing them in a proper case in a cool, dry area inside your home is obviously much safer, but they still have a limited lifespan, although they just haven't been around long enough to say for sure what that lifespan is. Given the cheap cost of external hard drives discussed in this thread, it's cheap insurance, and gives you a convenient way to store not only all the pictures you might have on CD right now, but also to store music so that it doesn't eat up all the space on your main HD (a problem on my machines), and a way to back up important files and/or do a total backup/disk image on your main hard drive so that in case of HD failure, you can avoid losing important data.