Author : Michelle Albright
Welcome back and Happy New Year. I’d love to see a post about the importance of printing and backing up digital images. So many people think their images are perfectly safe on their computers until a crash or virus occurs. Also, the importance and difference between a silver and gold cd. I explain to my customers it’s like the difference between silver and gold jewelry; but I’d love to direct them to your more technical explanation. Love your blog … thanks for sharing. Michelle (CMC in MD)
Storing images on a single computer is essentially the same as not preserving them at all, and yet a surprising number of people do exactly that. Hard disks contain moving parts, which will fail over time. In fact, the the average lifetime of a hard disk is about five years. If a hard disk fails, the cost of recovering files is significant (hundreds to thousands of dollars), if in fact they can be recovered.
Backups, either to a second computer or to an external hard disk, are a better option. The problem here is the same factors, such as power spikes or viruses, that cause the first drive to fail, may also cause problems with the second drive. In addition, the backup drive may simply replicate problems before you realize that the files on the first drive have problems.
The best backups are to optical discs, which cannot be changed after they are written. I recommend gold discs because these discs resist oxidation that may affect other discs on the market. The difference is similar to the difference between gold jewelry, which remains brilliant, and sterling silver, which tarnishes over time. More information of these discs is available at https://allaboutimages.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/cdanddvd.pdf.
All About Images Blog 