When your business holds or attends special events, like when Laser Lab’s Vince McHenry was a panel speaker at a recent Brother event, you want to make sure you preserve those professional memories. And on the personal front, with summer around the corner, you might be thinking about the best way to save the pictures you’ll capture of your family’s fun and adventures.
In this digital age, priceless photos and videos often don’t get made into a hard copy form, so it’s critical to back them up electronically to prevent them from becoming lost or unintentionally deleted. In a recent blog post, we discussed the importance of data backup. While some similarities exist between backing up other data and backing up photos and videos, you should also know about some important differences. Let’s take a moment to discuss:
- Tips for effective photo and video backup
- Free photo apps to help you back up photos and videos
Tips for Backing Up Photos and Videos
1. As with other types of data backup, you have many tools and options to choose from.
- USB flash drives offer an inexpensive, compact, and convenient way to backup visual data.
- External hard drives deliver large storage capacity, and they are affordable and easy to set up.
- Cloud storage platforms offer a secure, remote solution that you can access from anywhere and anytime when you’re connected to the Internet.
- Photo apps that provide photo and video editing capabilities and other features also offer photo and video backup.
2. As with any type of data backup, consider having multiple types of backup and keeping your backed-up data in multiple locations. That way if one method or location becomes compromised, you will still have your photos and videos preserved. We recommend the “3-2-1” rule of thumb:
- Maintain three copies of the data.
- Save data via two different methods.
- At least one method should be off-site (or cloud-based).
3. Photos and videos consume a lot of storage space. They require devices or cloud storage solutions with ample available space.
Free Photo Apps
Because of photos’ and videos’ large file sizes, people often turn to photo apps as a backup solution. Generally, they are affordable and straightforward to use.
Some popular photo apps include:
- Shutterfly
- Flicker
- Apple iCloud Photos (storage up to 5 GB)
- Google Photos
Many photo apps offer free subscriptions. However, look for some potential “gotchas.” Although there might not be a monetary cost for using an app, some require that you agree to give up some privacy. For example, some companies will collect information from you to display targeted ads, sell your data to other companies, or even use your photos for marketing purposes. Read the fine print so that you’re aware of how your photos and information will be used and understand your privacy rights.
For your convenience, here are links to the privacy policies of the photo apps we mentioned above:
Got Questions?
If you have questions about best practices and tools for saving your data, photos, and videos, contact the IT experts at Laser Lab. We’re just a phone call away to help you with all your data backup and recovery needs!