Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Gone Gmail

Many of us have been using gmail, yahoo, hotmail and the like as "insurance policies," guaranteed free storage, since we don't know how long our hard disk or aol or netvision or whatever will last. A friend recently told me that when she checked out her gmail account, she found it empty, and then she googled for more info on it and discovered that she wasn't the only one unpleasantly surprised.

It's frightening that on one hand, anything on the computer may be hacked or stolen, but there's no guarantee that the data will remain.

As a postscript to this, old photos, especially black and white, keep for decades plus, but our storage disks have a much shorter shelf-life. We take more pictures, print fewer, and who knows what will be available for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren?

4 comments:

Leora said...

You (or your friends) may want to consider Shutterfly, Snapfish or Kodakgallery for photo storage. There the company at least has an incentive to keep you happy, because they want you to order prints.

You know the old expression: you can't get something for nuthin'.

And backup, backup, backup. If something is important, keep it in more than one place (and possibly more than one format...at least you can scan a print back into your computer later).

And now, of course, I should follow my own advice...

Batya said...

Thanks for the ideas. I have pictures on flicka and photobucket besides on cd's and my other computer and some printed. Actually I have thousands on cd's. I'm not familiar with most of those you mentioned. Are they free?

Leora said...

It is free to set up an account. You only pay when you order something. I've used both Kodakgallery and Shutterfly for printing. And others can look at your photos, if they set up an account (you see, they want to drum up business among your friends and family, too).

Batya said...

good to know
thanks