Quote Originally Posted by banman1


they r just in my pc hard drive,i to have been thinking about a external drive to because of same malware problems to.



How important are your pictures to you? If the answer is anything other than, "I don't give a cr*p if I lose them forever," then you'd better get a backup. Or two. Or three. Or more.


In addition to hanging out here on TDP, I also participate in Apple Discussions (a great forum for Mac and iPhone/iPod/iPad users). Every day there are posts along the lines of 'my hard drive crashed but I have my pics backed up to my iPhone, how do I get them back?' At least those folks have a second copy of their favorite pics. The sad part is their only remaining copy of what started out as a nice, high-resolution image is a 0.6 megapixel version that's not even suitable for a 4x6" print.


Personally, my RAW images go from the CF card to my notebook's hard drive, immediately get backed up to an external drive, and remain on the CF card while I'm processing them, too. Once the RAW images are processed and converted to jpg, the jpgs stay on my computer, and the final RAW file set is backed up to two separate external drives - one at home and one at work. Then I format the CF card. Finally, every two months I burn the RAW files to a DVD and that goes in a safe deposit box, in a bank that's in a town different than the town where I live and the city where I work.


So, the only time I've got only one copy of my images is while they are in the CF card in the camera after I've shot them. Once I transfer them, I've got at least three copies stored on three different hard drives in two different locations.


Note that having an offsite backup is key - obviously, no one wants to think about what would happen if your house were to catch on fire. But then why do you have insurance? If the unthinkable happens, your 'stuff' can be replaced - things like furniture, appliances, whatever. But in the material loss department, one of the worst is the loss of your family memories and records. So if you back up your photos and movies to an external drive, and both your main and your backup drives are in the same place, you're still at risk.


One other option to consider is an online backup service like Mozy or Carbonite.