View Full Version : Photo storage question
On our recent trip to TX, DH picked up eight boxes of family photos that his parents never dealt with. We have whittled it down to four but it becomes obvious that we need to store the rest in some way. We don't have complete faith in cloud storage since most of the photos will be scanned and then tossed. Internet research on products gives me a headache. Can anyone recommend a basic (under $100) external unit for storing all these images?
I would like this answered as well.
How are the little ones in TX doing?
How are the little ones in TX doing?
Thanks for asking. Toddler twins are an endless source of amusement and at the age where they can finally converse so there are fun conversations.
ToomuchStuff
6-20-21, 5:22pm
Do you have a scanner?
Dvd burner?
External hard drive?
As long as you have a scanner, I would scan them to my pc, save to an external hard drive or several (USB stick, etc) and burn a dvd of them.
pinkytoe, are you just looking for a way to store the scanned images locally?
If so, then I would recommend a pair of external hard drives. Even "spinner" drives will be good enough. You don't need the speed of a solid-state drive.
Use a format like JPEG or TIFF that has been around forever. Categorize the pictures in a way that makes sense to you: by date, location, family name, whatever. You might want to consider using software that lets you tag files ("Toe Family", "2021 Reunion", "Eenie", "Meenie", "Miney", "Mo", "Statesville" etc.) but make sure the tagging follows an accepted general format and isn't just internal to the application (like Adobe's Lightroom)
Put the pictures on one drive and then sync or copy the one drive to the other. Take the second drive and put it somewhere safe -- to work (if that's not in your home), a safety deposit box at a bank, someone else's house (to avoid weather or fire from wiping out a backup stored on premises), etc. The important part is to not have the backup that near the original to help provide physical safety.
And then I would periodically check both drives to make sure they still work and serve you pictures you choose at random. This also helps ensure that whatever connection the drive uses is still available to you. My first Macs had SCSI hard drives. Finding a current computer that reads SCSI without special hardware is a challenge. And then there are operating system constraints (no longer supports Thunderbolt 1, etc.). The simpler you can keep this, the better.
I just finished backups of my important photos. I don't trust the cloud either, possibly out of ignorance. I now have these on my laptop memory and desktop memory, plus a copy on a flash drive and an external SSD drive. I'm not sure how long the desktop will be in my life since I don't use it too often, but the larger screen is nice to view photos. I'm going to keep the SSD drive in my home and the flash drive in a safety deposit box. I have some fairly large file sizes and the whole collection takes up about 100 GB of memory, but JPEGs of 4x6 or so prints will not take up much memory. I can guess that either type of memory is subject to failure over time.
I've had varied luck scanning prints, especially matte print paper finishes. If you go the scanner route it would probably be worth while to try a few samples to see that it meets your expectations. I sent slides out for professional scans. Depending on how many photos are in each box, scanning could be pretty time consuming. Might it be possible to digitize just the important ones and keep the rest in boxes? Many of my color family prints and slides have had significant fading depending on the medium. Digitized is a good way to stop the fade if you're noticing any color degradation and want to preserve the picture quality.
I suspect the web might have more advice with a search, as it seems like it might be a common issue. I also have unscanned photos in traditional photo albums, but anymore any sort of photo browsing or review seems much easier than digging boxes out of the closet, but it is sort of nice to step out of the digital world back to analog days.
I store my photos in three different places, Google Photos, a 1TB portable drive on my home network and on my primary laptop.
DH is an amateur photographer so he has a scanner made for photos and slides. Today he tried taking photos of some 100 year old prints with his phone and then cleaning up the images since scanning everything is very time consuming. The goal is to have no more than one box of actual prints from each side of the family. Everything else digital. As it is, we will need to spend quite a few more hours just deciding which are worth keeping in either mode. And then there is one box full of old home movies - ugh!
I don't trust anything.
So I store my photos and important documents in several different cloud services, as well as keeping local copies, and using both an on-site and an external backup service.
It is also important to consider what file formats you are saving your documents and photos in, and to do a little thinking about the longevity of software standards and programs to decode various data formats. I don't bother to save RAW format photo data for most things, as I suspect if I ever go back to that image 20 years from now, I'm not going to bet that anyone's software will nicely interpret the proprietary RAW format camera data.
happystuff
6-21-21, 10:15am
I have already scanned *most* of our photos, but still have the digital organizing to do. I know it's going to take a lot of time, but I also know it will be fun looking at the photos again.
catherine
6-21-21, 12:07pm
I don't trust anything.
So I store my photos and important documents in several different cloud services, as well as keeping local copies, and using both an on-site and an external backup service.
It is also important to consider what file formats you are saving your documents and photos in, and to do a little thinking about the longevity of software standards and programs to decode various data formats. I don't bother to save RAW format photo data for most things, as I suspect if I ever go back to that image 20 years from now, I'm not going to bet that anyone's software will nicely interpret the proprietary RAW format camera data.
I agree... Can you imagine if we all had saved the only copies of our photos on floppy disks? I still have one floppy and sometimes I think, "maybe there's something important on this" but there is no way I'm going to the lengths it would take to find someone with an old floppy disk drive so I can find out there's nothing of value on it.
What if there's a cyberwar and everything on the Cloud is gone or inaccessible? Even if it is accessible, what are you putting in place to ensure that people you would want to see it even know it's there and then how to access it?
I make yearly calendars for my kids' families and for myself, and I put the best pictures of the previous year on the appropriate months. That's one way I keep hard copies. I also store family history photos and text on Ancestry.com and print and store the same stuff filed away in a "genealogy" folder in my file cabinet.
One thing I've been thinking of doing is trying that Shark Tank product: https://www.groovebook.com. Seems easy and methodological.
Or you could simply just choose the best pictures to put in an old-fashioned scrapbook of some kind, and then throw the "can't decides" into a box for the next generation to figure out. (If you do that, try to at least identify people in the photos on the back.)
That's what do, Catherine. I find it's really easy to pull out pictures when I want to show the kids somebody from the past, usually because their kids are a dead ringer for that person.
Although we had an eerie moment last week when I played around with a current picture of myself and put it through an age regression app and it looked exactly like my granddaughter. I sent it to my son, who said it was "mindblowing."
catherine
6-21-21, 12:43pm
That's what do, Catherine. I find it's really easy to pull out pictures when I want to show the kids somebody from the past, usually because their kids are a dead ringer for that person.
Although we had an eerie moment last week when I played around with a current picture of myself and put it through an age regression app and it looked exactly like my granddaughter. I sent it to my son, who said it was "mindblowing."
That is so cool... we often try to tie the looks of the child to one parent or another, but genetically, there's a lot that genetically connects a person to their grandparents. I've often thought that my 1st son looks exactly like my mother did, according to the old pictures I have. I've seen pictures that show a resemblance of Princess Charlotte to a picture of Queen Elizabeth at the same age. I was recently reviewing a photo of my great-grandfather who I think looks a lot like my son.
I'd love to see that age regression app!
It's called FaceApp and it's free; you install it, then use the camera on yourself, then you can age or de-age you.
Here is what it did when I took a photo in the car, first old me (aging me) then young me (regressing me):
38353836
But it was from the same photo of actual me--just added 20-30 years, then subtracted 60 years.
It's called FaceApp and it's free; you install it, then use the camera on yourself, then you can age or de-age you.
Thanks--I don't need the age version.. the "how old am I" (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/how-old-do-i-look/9mw6bvjqjwzx?activetab=pivot:overviewtab) app is depressing enough. :0!
But I'll try the de-age function!
I actually got it for the aging one because I was reading a book about retirement and it said to do it and then use the old picture to inspire you to take care of yourself in retirement.
It was SO depressing and creepy that dh and I both said we didn't want to do it anymore.
Here is what it did when I took a photo in the car, first old me (aging me) then young me (regressing me):
38353836
But it was from the same photo of actual me--just added 20-30 years, then subtracted 60 years.
That is so cool! (love "old" version hair!)
Yeah, my nose seemed to get a lot bigger and I look like my Uncle W.A.
ApatheticNoMore
6-21-21, 1:48pm
It sounds really really depressing. Yea one has to take care of themselves in the future, but one first needs to survive until then, and that's often the conflict.
happystuff
6-21-21, 1:55pm
It sounds really really depressing. Yea one has to take care of themselves in the future, but one first needs to survive until then, and that's often the conflict.
Occasionally - actually rarely - I have thought about doing this with one of my son's last pictures. His birthday is tomorrow and that is when I usually wonder what he would look like by now. I probably won't do it simply because it won't really be him. It is depressing.
Teacher Terry
6-21-21, 1:59pm
Happy, my best friend’s daughter died 11 years ago at the age of 19 and she is frozen in time at that age. It’s hard when her friends graduated college, got married and had kids. Just a reminder of what will never be.
Occasionally - actually rarely - I have thought about doing this with one of my son's last pictures. His birthday is tomorrow and that is when I usually wonder what he would look like by now. I probably won't do it simply because it won't really be him. It is depressing.
love and hugs to you, happystuff. <3
I am so sorry for your loss, happystuff. Please know my thoughts are with you tomorrow.
iris lilies
6-21-21, 3:59pm
Here is what it did when I took a photo in the car, first old me (aging me) then young me (regressing me):
38353836
But it was from the same photo of actual me--just added 20-30 years, then subtracted 60 years.
wow!
It is hard to look at the photos of loved ones gone too soon or tragically - at least for me. I lost my younger brother to whom I was very close when I was 34; I have only a handful of photos of his forever young, handsome self. On a related note, we sent the scanned Victorian photos to the last relative who might know who they were. He had no clue so out they go.
happystuff
6-22-21, 10:51am
Thank you TT, catherine and Tybee. We still celebrate his birthday by going out to dinner so we will do that, hopefully, this coming weekend.
pinkytoe - Interesting how different people are. I treasure the photos of all my kids and having them makes me glad I was a little "camera crazy" when they were growing up. LOL.
iris lilies
6-22-21, 11:54am
Thank you TT, catherine and Tybee. We still celebrate his birthday by going out to dinner so we will do that, hopefully, this coming weekend.
pinkytoe - Interesting how different people are. I treasure the photos of all my kids and having them makes me glad I was a little "camera crazy" when they were growing up. LOL.
Oh you can’t have too many photos of kids especially those who are gone. Even if the photos are blurry and not wonderful.
As for for the graphic images, I keep everything in the cloud. I suppose if it all disappears it’ll be sad but not critical to my life. Actually, as I think about, that will be very easy for you I was cleaning up after my life because I won’t have to go through thousands of photographs.
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