You’re not looking to pick up an extra career in the tech world but you do want to understand the basics so you can make sure your digital photographs are all safe. If that’s you, I know exactly how you feel!
I’m happy to help you skip as much tech jargon as possible, but there is one tech subject you need to know about to get your photographs organized: external hard drives.
Let’s talk simplest terms. This is how I would explain an external hard drive if I was talking to a child!
Do you know how you save things on your computer……. each of those things takes up a little space on the computers hard drive. It’s kind of like putting your stuff in a closet. Some closets are big and some closets are small but eventually, you can run out of space in any closet. If you put too much stuff in your computers closet (aka it’s hard drive) your computer will start to have trouble operating. Photos can fill up that closet pretty quickly. An external hard drive is like getting an extra closet. It plugs into your computer but sits on your desk next to the computer. You can save all kinds of files, including pictures to that external hard drive instead of on the computer. You can also have multiple external hard drives, and one can be dedicated to saving all of your pictures. Imagine having an entire closet in your home that you open up and it has every picture you’ve ever taken is neatly filed in boxes. Even your ancestors photographs could be organized by year in boxes….. that’s what an external hard drive can do.
Ok. So now you get the gist of what the external hard drive is. But why is it so important to store your photographs on one?
Rule of thumb is to be photo organized you need to have your pictures stored in multiple locations. I live by this myself. I keep a copy in Amazon Photos and one copy of each photograph on my external hard drive.
I talk to people everyday who have lost or damaged photographs. It is much more common than most people think. If you only have one copy of a photo you are risking that heartache. An easy storage location to keep one of those digital copies is a cloud service, like Amazon Photos. However, what happens if your account is hacked? What if their server fails? What if they just decide tomorrow they aren’t offering that service anymore? What happens to your pictures? That’s why you have the external hard drive too.
If you also keep a digital copy of every photograph on that external hard drive you aren’t solely depending on that cloud service.
I personally use the Western Digital Desktop External Hard Drive. This is the one I have had the best luck with. It’s super easy to use and gives a little piece of mind knowing your photographs have a safe back up!