How do you like to keep your personal photos/videos safe?

[Taube]

Here's a way to keep your data safe:
Hitachi to unveil a storage medium by 2015 which lasts for 100 Million years

[RedRed]

she's only 9 months old...
Taking her to Disneyland for her birthday so that's gonna just overload everything.

She's not gonna remember anything, why would you waste money on this?

[Mazmaz]

Store your data on one of these

[The Stig]

She's not gonna remember anything, why would you waste money on this?

Agreed. Even photos won't do much good.

I think it was about the age of 6 or 7 before I became self-aware. Anything pre that age is a bit fuzzy. Even seeing photos before that age I felt it wasn't me.

[Apelila]

Nothing wrong with taking a kid to Disneyland when they're young, that place is built around families. Unless you're not used to taking her out so she doesn't panic at all the noise and people, you're good to go. A 1 year old is very easy to manage, its the people who bring 3-4 year olds that are stupid (they'll vaguely remember it later and you have to constantly watch them if they can walk).

Back to the subject on hand: I'm in the process of scanning, backing up, and archiving all my parents photo's, videos, and audio recordings. Sometime next month I have to break out a real to real player that has voices on it from 70 years ago so I can play it for my Dad and Aunt before they pass away.

Scanning pictures sucks donkey cock. I have a photo/negative scanner, and it goes slower than you can imagine. I'm at about 80 gigs in photo's right now and that's just from 2006 to now, including backed up digital photo's. I've actually thought about this and here is my plan for when I'm done:

The most secure means would be to double up with 2 external SSD drive's. Keep one off site, one on site in a fireproof safe. Every 6 months update the offsite drive. As technology/size increase, replace with more secure/larger capacity devices. My parents and I are going to keep each other's back ups - that way something would have to happen to pretty much all of northern texas to screw me over, and at that point I probably wont care about pictures.

[Gokulo]

SSD's for photos and videos? O.o

[Apelila]

No moving parts, only worry is physical damage to the unit. Drives with motors, even unused, have a finite lifetime.

Edit: I probably wont use SSD's for a couple of years just for cost/size. I also expect there to be something better to come out by 2020 for long term storage, since the first run of millennials, gen X, and such with older parents will start to run into this as a problem as the older baby boomer parents/grandparents start to die off.

[Gokulo]

That's all true, but it still seems like a waste of money to buy them as storage for photos and videos.

[Apelila]

I didn't say it was cheap :D. As an alternative you could just buy High Capacity SD cards, either way you'll spend some change if you have any significant cache of photo's/video. If you're looking to eliminate as many points of failure as possible, that's the way to go.

[Tyche]

I shoot 20mp raw+jpg and don't have 50GB between all 3 of my kids. Contrary to women's brains, you don't have to keep 100% of the exposures, you'll never use 90% of them for anything other than occupying space.

[Posterboy]

Have you tried smugmug? They let you store unlimited jpgs up to (I think) 50mb in size.

[zoobernut]

Have you tried smugmug? They let you store unlimited jpgs up to (I think) 50mb in size.

Smugmug is great for this. I use smugmug but I also keep two external 2TB drives that are mirrors of each other for all my photos and videos.

[Seraph]

Inevitably hard drives will fail, why I prefer hard media for anything I don't want to risk ever losing.

Hard media can have the same problems too, though usually after a longer period of time.

[Ksandra]

Have you tried smugmug? They let you store unlimited jpgs up to (I think) 50mb in size.

I'll check this out thanks! Probably going to go the HD+ safe route for everything.

She's not gonna remember anything, why would you waste money on this?

Agreed. Even photos won't do much good.

I think it was about the age of 6 or 7 before I became self-aware. Anything pre that age is a bit fuzzy. Even seeing photos before that age I felt it wasn't me.

There are a lot of reasons we're doing it, but the major one is initially at Xmas time my parents gave us $200 specifically to give the baby something fun. We didn't know what to get her as she is just overloaded with toys n' clothes n' such, so they said to take her to Disneyland. I decided to hold off until at least her one year as even though she won't remember it, she'll still have fun while there at that age. (plus awkward to keep holding her xmas money longer than that). My family is a huge disney family, my parents have timeshare in Orlando and I've been going to disney world since I was two.

And before anyone says "why not set up a college fund etc. etc." As I said, they specifically wanted this money for fun. They send us other money periodically as gifts that we are putting into a savings for her.

[Tweek]

I have a Synology DS1512+ for the small amount of data you're fucking with you could just get a simple DS212j and burn to a bluray disc every couple months for an additional backup.

[finitek]

Just a few quick ideas. I haven't perused all the suggestions yet.
For videos seriously consider a private youtube account. upload the shorter videos and you have have what is essentially free storage. I am forgetting the limit, but after a set amount of time there is no limit on the amount you can upload. Mark the videos private then you can share them with relatives far away etc.
I keep triple copies of everything. I have several external drives, DVD back-ups of every 6 months, and finally if you ever consider making prints pick a service out there and upload your photos there as well.

[Intervention]

I didn't say it was cheap :D. As an alternative you could just buy High Capacity SD cards, either way you'll spend some change if you have any significant cache of photo's/video. If you're looking to eliminate as many points of failure as possible, that's the way to go.

Ksandra's husband here.

Hmmm SD cards sounds feasible, the flexibility of size. I guess the big question would be, how long do they last?

[Hellfury]

I use a NAS with 4x 2TB HDs, one pair is set in RAID1 for primary backups, with optical discs as secondary backups. Don't use online backup services personally because of legalese and paranoia.
(The havoc around instagram, and the supposed "misunderstanding" of the plans for change in usage terms, should be enough to make anyone paranoid.)

Intend to, but never got around to yet, place a secondary NAS @ parental units place for offsite backup.

[Correction]

SD cards and optical media are both poor choices for 55GB and growing worth of periodic backups, aren't they? Unless you feel like spending hours each time doing it, just get a drive cradle and some cheap drives. Boom, 480Mb/s transfer rates and super cheap by comparison. They even make them in USB 3.0 flavors if you have a computer with the correct ports.

[Mizango]

One photo with just Ksandra in the frame is like 100 Megs.

ROFL. Knew it was a matter of time.