by Ruth Kongaika

Created on: November 26, 2009

The holidays are some of the most memorable times of the year. Nothing could be more devastating than realizing that you have lost some of your holiday digital photos. All the decorations, the family together for the first time in quite a while, and all the feasting and presents. With a bit of planning and consistency before the holidays, you can avoid the sinking feeling that comes with photographic data loss.

Fortunately today there are several options for storing your valuable pictures. Before the holiday rush, purchase at least two to three memory cards for your camera and plenty of batteries. Memory cards are reusable, but they do not have a limitless capacity. It is best to have more than you need than not enough. Think about getting gigabyte rather than megabyte memory cards. Make sure you get the appropriate cards for your camera. Do not try to stuff all your pictures onto one card. There are also external storage packs that can read multiple cards and store thousands of photos available which are quite affordable.

Alternately, if you have a laptop, make make use of it. As soon as you return from your day's celebration, download the pictures from your camera to your computer. It is also best to make up a backup copy onto a flash drive in case something goes wrong with your computer. Before backing up the photos, it would be good to put them in a folder with the location and date indicated.

There are several online photo storage places. If you have a connection to the internet, you can back up your photos as soon as possible to one of them. Flickr, photobucket, shutterfly, snapfish, and many others are free to sign up for. It would be best to sign up before you get too busy. Because some of the digital photo files can be large, make sure that the storage site you sign up for accepts larger files. You may have to pay extra to store very large files on the internet like raw image formats.

You could also take blank CD/DVDs and burn your photos onto those so you have an extra copy. That way you would have some to give to family members which they will be thrilled with. Most important of all, do not erase the pictures on your camera until you are sure that you have backed them up in at least two places. That way you will have many hours of reflection while viewing your preserved holiday memories.

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