Hurricane Gustav chased an estimated two million people from their homes. Fires in Southern California and Yosemite Park areas destroyed thousands of acres and burnt hundreds of homes. Floods in the Midwest swept into homes despite residents’ best efforts. Every day natural disasters take their financial and emotional toll around, not just in the U.S., but around the world.
Donna Wilsker, a long-time scrapbooker and resident of Beaumont, Tex., was partially prepared when Katrina sent her and her husband, Ira, to their daughter’s home in Houston two years ago. They fled the area with as many of their valuables as they could fit in their Honda Accord, including her scrapbooks and a stack of 20 CDs, containing the family’s complete digital photo collection.
“Both of our daughters have copies of the discs, just in case,” Donna noted, “but I still wanted to take my copies with me. A tree damaged the roof over my home office and my computer was basically trashed by the water coming in, as were a box of my older film prints. I guess we were lucky, compared to some.”
Katrina was a wake-up call for Donna to convert her old family film into digital files…just in case. Scanning 20 years of photos wasn’t something Donna found “fun” but she’s glad the task was done. “We now have digital copies of everything,” she said. “From our wedding pictures, to the birth and graduation of the girls, and even old photos of relatives I inherited from my Dad. All of our family memories are finally in the 21st century.”
“It was a time-consuming labor of love,” she continued. “The biggest problem was focusing on the task. I kept looking at each photo reminiscing each moment in time.”
Once they were sorted, Donna began scanning each picture. “I saved the small photos at 600dpi and the 8×10’s at 300dpi. The files are large, but I wanted the flexibility to color correct and enhance the photos. Some of the older ones had faded or were bent. Fixing each picture is tedious; it’s a work in progress.”
Having invested so much time in digitizing her photos, Donna wanted to create a fail-safe backup and archiving plan. “I found a website, PhotoStorageGuide.com that highlighted the benefits of different archiving and backup solutions. Based on my needs, I chose three options…an external hard drive for backup, DVDs for archiving, and online storage. My 250GB hard drive came with software which allowed me to set up an automated backup routine daily. DVDs in multiple copies are still my choice for archiving, and online storage lets me share my photos with family and friends. I feel confident now that, no matter what happens, my family memories are safe.
The fires that raged through the San Diego area hills this Spring was stopped five miles from the canyon top home of Lou and Gideon Zekan. But that was close enough to begin packing and making the agonizing decision of what she might have to leave behind.
A collector of her family’s antiquities, Lou was concerned that she might have to leave some of her family heirlooms behind if they had to evacuate. She busied herself as the flames crept over the hills by taking photos of everything in their home and yard. “I read somewhere that having a photo record of valuables made insurance claims easier.”
She downloaded all of the photos to her new Mac notebook computer, backed all of her photo/video projects to an external 160GB HD, uploaded copies to her online photo service. Lou was also concerned about a photo project she had started a few months before that she wanted to complete for her dad’s birthday early next year.
She had amassed hundreds of irreplaceable photos and documents from her mother, her dad’s military service friends, and friends of friends. She wanted to put together a one-of-a-kind “My Dad” scrapbook.
She had already scanned, stored and returned 50 percent of the documents and photos and shuddered at the thought of losing any of the rest. All of the content she had in digital form was backed up on her external drive, sent to her online photo space and CD copies, as well as the original photos, were sent to her in-laws in Northern California.
“Gideon had other priorities,” she said with a smile. “He was concerned about saving all of his computer gear, our two dogs and getting his very pregnant wife to safety as quickly as possible if necessary.” Now that fire danger is behind them, she is busy scanning and organizing the other photos and documents.
“I can’t wait to complete the scrapbook and give it to Dad,” she said. “Some of his most enduring memories are of war times.”
Tracy Laidlaw of Peoria, AZ, who has never experienced a loss from a natural disaster, said all of her losses and near losses was of her own making.
“You hit the wrong key when you’re editing a photo and if you’re lucky you start the editing process all over again,” she commented. “If you aren’t lucky, the photo is deleted, gone…forever!” Tracy now uses a continuous backup software program to backup her files to an external hard drive. In addition, she copies all of their photos and videos to DVD’s, which are stored in a fireproof lockbox.
“Because DVD’s have so much capacity,” she noted, “I do an incremental backup until the disc is full. Then, I make two duplicates, one of which goes to work with me. The other goes to my mother’s house in San Francisco.”
“Even name brand discs are so cheap today,” she continued, “There’s no reason not to make multiple copies.”
In each of these instances the family memory keepers reviewed their storage options and chose multiple solutions. True natural disasters don’t happen every day, but computer failure and viruses happen all the time…to all of us.
Putting together your photo/video/data backup and archive solution is half the job. Rigorously using it is the other half. There’s an abundance of assistance online and a good place to start is www.photostorageguide.com
