Protecting the Digital Shoebox (on the Cheap)

There's a rather long-winded article on LIVEdigitally about The Digital Shoebox. What it boils down to basically is that we need to be backing up our "digital shoeboxes"--that is, our hard drives full of digital photos and movies. I've been saying that for years. The good news is, it's now cheaper than ever to do so with the costs of hard drives dropping every day. And a hard drive is definitely the most convenient way to back up another hard drive.

Right now, external hard drives are going for a little more than a dollar a gigabyte. But, if you look for rebates and sales, an internal hard drive can be had for as little as 50 cents per gig. For another $20-30 you can purchase an external drive enclosure () to convert an internal drive to an external. I have several of these and they work out great! You may even have a spare old drive laying around that you can use. For most, even a 10 GB drive is more than enough to back up several years worth of digital photos. This is a review of an older Belkin enclosure, but it will give you a good idea of what is involved in setting one up: Belkin's USB 2.0 Drive Enclosure

I still use DVDs and CDs for sharing photos with family, and I periodically burn backups to DVD to store in a fire-proof safe, but for frequent reliable backups, the external hard drive is by far the easiest solution.

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Also see: Backing Up Your PC Data