Backup Your Photos With A DVD Burner!
If you're a first-time digital camera user, what you may not realize is that eventually, even if your camera has a lot of space on the card or built-in memory, at some point, you will need to save all the photos you've taken somehow. Eventually, your camera's space will fill up and you'll have to get some more space (and that is the beauty of digital cameras, of course, that you can re-use the space!).
To get more space, you need to delete the photos off the camera, but not before you copy those images elsewhere. Now, you can copy the photos to your computer's hard drive (or "C" drive if you use a Windows system) but here's something to ask yourself: what happens if something bad happens to your computer's hard drive?
Hard drives most of the time are reliable (if they weren't, computers would be unusable). But once in a while, things happen. Inside a hard drive are a series of stacked, metallic platters with one arm that "hovers" over each platter. (Think of it as a very multi-level CD player.) Since a hard drive is a mechanical device, then, and since mechanical things wear out, at some point your hard drive may fail - when you least want it to.
If the section of the hard drive that develops a problem is the same section where you've saved all your photos, you have a BIG problem. If a hard drive sector becomes unreadable, maybe you'll be able to display the image, maybe not. If the image can be displayed, it may have flaws - discoloration, missing pixels, and other things that can ruin the image.
How do you defend against this? By saving your digital photos to blank DVD's. It doesn't matter whether you save to either of the DVD standard formats (DVD-R or DVD+R), the idea is to have your photos safe and sound on something that's outside your computer system. You can also make multiple copies of your photo sets to blank DVD's without spending a lot of money.
When I backup my photo sets, I normally make at least two DVD's - one that I can use around the house, and one that I store off-site (like in a bank's safe deposit box).
Making backups doesn't just protect your digital photos in the case something happens to your computer's hard drive, it also protects your photos in case something happens to your home. Heaven forbid someone breaks in and steals your computer while you're out at work, or your home burns to the ground, but if you have extra copies of your digital photos you can make copies of those copies and they'll be as perfect as the first time you copied them from your camera (with conventional film negatives, of course, you have to take the negative to a lab for processing before you can get the pictures back). (I actually knew this one guy in Austin who lost 8 years of photographs in a fire - 8 years - ouch. Don't let that happen to you.)
To save your photos to a blank DVD, you have to go to a computer retailer (or anyplace that sells computer parts) and buy a DVD burner. (It's called a "burner" because it contains a laser that actually burns your photos' digital image data to the surface of the blank disc.) DVD burners have come down in price; you can get a good burner from a name brand for less than $100 (and in some cases less than $70). I am partial to Pioneer but Sony is another good brand I would recommend. Samsung is acceptable also. Stay away from the cheaper brands.
The burner you buy will come with software with which you can create a DVD with your photos. Keep in mind that a blank DVD will hold up to 4.7 gigabytes' worth of data, or the equivalent of 7 blank CD's. If you have a 4-megapixel camera, this will hold a lot of photos! Also, keep in mind that DVD burners can also burn to blank CD's (which hold 700 MB); you might find blank CD's more practical if you don't take photos very often. A stack of 50 blank DVD's can be purchased for less than $20 in many cases; a stack of blank CD's for about half that price.
Many computer retailers can install DVD burners in your computers for you (for a modest fee), but if you have a tech-savvy friend (like me!), you can get him/her to do it for you. If you're not afraid of opening your computer, you can install the drive yourself, but be sure your system has a second, empty slot for the burner drive or you'll have to remove the one that's there already. Follow the instructions for attaching the data and power cables correctly; get on the Internet for help if you get stuck. And be sure to install the software drivers for the burner after you've put the cover back on your computer.
Software from Nero or Ulead is common for making DVD's and aren't very hard to use. Read the software's documentation (sometimes in PDF format on the installation CD/DVD) to find out how to use it. Or ask a friend.
How can making backups save your photos and your sanity? Consider this scenario:
You're using your computer one day and you notice that it's contracted a virus. You can't get rid of it, so you take your computer in to a computer store for service. The technician tells you that hard drive is fried so you'll have to get a new hard drive and they'll have to reinstall the operating system on it for you. He also tells you they can't save your files.
So, after you cuss and swear a little, you leave the computer there, and they do the job. You get your computer back. Since you were smart enough to backup your photo files, you turn on the computer, put your DVD with your photos in the DVD drive, and copy all the photos back to your computer's hard drive.
It takes all of 6 minutes.
By the way, DVD burners are good for backing up other files on your computer, too, so if you have any Word files, spreadsheets, files you downloaded, music files, and so on, you can save those on blank DVD's as well. I recommend making backups at least once a month.
You can't afford not to back up your digital photos!