Archiving or Backing Up Your Photos
Imagine all of your photos in one place. All on a CD/DVD where you can view them on your computer or TV at any time. All safely stored for the future, no more photos in old shoe boxes. Sounds good doesn't it? We can do it for you. CD/DVD archiving allows you to make copies of your precious photos or documents, or print them at any time. Or you can just view them on your computer or DVD player. They can be in straight archive format or a digital slideshow, it´s up to you.
All CDs or DVDd are presented in a hard jewel case and your details or a photo printed on the CD/DVD (not a stuck on label).
We can scan prints, documents, slides and negatives for you digital archive. Even bring us your memory card from your digital camera and we´ll add that to our archive as well. (see digital processing for more information).
"How should I back up my photos?" is a question we are often asked. Our answer is ultimately it´s your choice but we can give you the benefit of our experience.
Hard drives are popular as photo storage devices as they can hold a huge amount of information but using a hard drive has risks. Apart from the obvious risk of it being outdated and not compatible with future computers, hard drives can suffer physical damage rendering them useless.
USB sticks are popular, very convenient and the storage capacity is increasing quickly. We have our doubts about how reliable they are going to be in years to come as they are still unproven.
BluRay is becoming popular and has a large capacity and may well be a good choice but their longevity is still to be proved.
CDs are rapidly being overtaken by DVDs but are still a widely used format and have been a reliable backup media.
DVDs are the standard storage media at this time and have poved to be reliable.
But what ever media you choose it´s always a good idea to back-up your archived disks i.e have another copy to be kept in a different location in case of disaster. It´s also a wise to review your archiving media from time to time because as technology advances so does the storage media so you don´t want your media to become obsolete before you get your precious photos off it. It would be foolish to have all of your photos stored on a video tape for example as this technology has been replaced by cds and dvds or have all of your music on tape cassettes as nobody uses them anymore. We prefer solid media like DVDs but as stated before a back up of your disk is recommended, we can supply a back up at the same time as the archiving is done if you wish.