Many Consumers still not backing up digital content
Summer photos and videos are guaranteed to bring back magic holiday memories, but just how safely are people storing their precious pictures and other digital content?
According to a recent survey conducted by F-Secure in the United States and seven other countries, many people have gone through the painful experience of losing irreplaceable content such as family photos, music collections or crucial work documents.
In the US, 34% of respondents said that they have lost irreplaceable digital content. Yet, while everyone fears losing their important files, in practice many people still don’t remember to make regular backups. F-Secure’s survey revealed that only 53% of US respondents said that they have stored or backed up their digital photos.
The most popular photo storage location remains the computer hard drive, with 34% of US respondents relying on this method. DVDs and CDs are also relatively popular storage media in the US (28%), while USB devices are less popular for storing photos among US respondents (7%). Sixteen percent of US survey respondents use the memory cards in their cameras.
Digital Home recommends that all digital camera owners take the time to implement an archival plan for their digital photos and video’s. The backup plan can be as simple as copying your photos to a DVD on a regular basis or a more complex plan involving the automated backups of your computers hard drive.
Whatever method you choose, Digital Home recommends you develop a plan and stick with it or risk the heartbreak of losing all your precious memories if and when the inevitable hard drive crash occurs.
Comment below or discuss backup solutions in our Home Computing forum.
during my lifetime there have been various wires, tapes and computer disks to store pix.
All become outdated and virtually non-useable by the time you actually have a collection.
so far the only way to ‘keep’ pix readily viewable is to have a printed copy in an album and give copies to family/friends and pass the album down to younger generations.
Real photographs do not get viruses nor do they ‘disappear’ if your computer crashes.
One of my favorite ways to backup is using an online service. I have a full backup on an external drive near my computer, but that won’t be much use in a case of theft or fire, so I have an additional online backup of my important files. It’s great to have a backup but even better to have one in another location. Those services are generally cheap, simple to setup and require no extra work once configured. They run in the background. Can’t afford not to do it!
What website are you using to back up your photos Joel?