Be careful where and how you store your files

Approximately 50 million people have lost access to their personal photos and videos.  Even worse, those images are in jeopardy of being deleted this coming Thursday.  There is nothing the users can do about gaining access, as the Federal Government has seized the domain of Megaupload.

The DOJ could have released funds to keep the storage alive but they didn’t.  Without timely payments, the hosting companies have no choice to delete all the files and resell the storage space.  Grandparents will not be able to see the latest videos of their grandkids.  They may also lose those memories permanently.

A lot of people take pictures and videos from their smartphones and upload them automatically to their favorite sharing site.  Usually the only local copy kept is on the phone and the users then have a habit of deleting the pictures when they run out of room.

Here is how you can save all your pictures, videos and important files from being caught in the cross-fire of the federal government and your storage company.

Save a copy of your video.  This is the key to any storage medium, whether it is on the Cloud or on a local hard drive.  You can be relatively safe if you have two copies of your pictures and videos.

It takes some discipline, but you can do it.

Take your smartphone and camera.  At the end of each day, hook up your phone and/or camera to your computer and copy the files over to a dedicated folder on your computer.  Disk drive storage is real inexpensive, so get an external or internal 500 GB or 1 TB (or even larger) storage device.  That will provide plenty of space for your pictures.

Do the same with your videos.  What if Google and Facebook get in a patent fight and Facebook wins and shuts down YouTube?  Worse yet, what if the Department Of Justice (DOJ) shuts YouTube down like they did to Megaupload?

I know these happenings are just about impossible, but I have seen a lot of strange happenings lately.

Next, if you don’t already have one, get a DVD-writable drive and a stack of writable DVD’s.  Set aside an evening or two to copy all your pictures from your hard drives to DVD’s.  Then take the DVD’s to a safe place like a safe deposit box or a friend’s or parent’s house.

After your first backup, you might want to invest in a backup program that will backup just the newer files to your backup drive.  This is really important.

What if some of your 100,000 pictures (I have around that many) get over-written on your primary storage?  This is possible when you have a camera that names files in a consecutive number and it rolls over, or worse yet, starts from dcs0001 each time you put a new memory card in the camera.

Those automated backup programs that save your files to the cloud are fine, with a few warnings.  If for some reason you do not pay the monthly/yearly fee, you will lose your files.

Let’s say you get hurt and are in the hospital.  The bills do not get paid on time and the backup storage is lost.  Since you are not home, someone breaks into your house and walks off with your computers and cameras.

Granted, this is a nearly worse-case example, but I know someone who had this happen.  The good news is that he had DVD backups of all his files over at his brother’s house.

Heed the warning: backup your important files and keep a copy in a different location.  Your next door neighbor in an apartment complex is not a good choice.  Someone on the other side of the city would be better.