Protect Your Digital Photos

One of the worst things is to take a bunch of digital photos of a once-in-a-lifetime event such as a wedding, an anniversary party, a child's birthday party, or a graduation, and then lose the photos!

I've known people who have lost hundreds of photos because they forgot to download the photos and accidentally deleted their digital camera memory card -- or after downloading their photos onto their computer, their hard drive crashed. It does happen.

My favorite idea for protecting your digital photos is to make a DVD or CD backup of all of your photos. Then take that DVD and put it in a safety deposit box along with your will and other legal documents. I also think having an extra copy at a family member's home is a good idea. Then if there is ever a disaster (whether fire, flood, or computer crash) -- you have the things that are most important.

If you do your scrapbooking on a MAC or have your photos stored on a MAC -- make sure you download the new MAC OS X security update. There are 17 bugs and a critical flaw which leaves your computer open to a MAC virus going around. The security patch was released yesterday, so make sure you get it installed as soon as possible.