Parents and grandparents use to have shelves full of photo albums sporting grainy polaroid photos of holidays and vacations past, family gatherings, and cherished moments. These days, it’s not uncommon for a photo to be taken that simply sits in storage on a phone, never bringing a smile to anyone else’s face. There are so many options for storing or sharing photos, many which can be set to update automatically to effortlessly fill your days with surprises and memories. The following are just a few ways to store photos digitally.
Social media sites
Sites like Facebook and Instagram often contain photo and video uploads, although there are some drawbacks. Photos are typically resized or compressed, so if you want to keep high-quality images on these platforms, you may need to adjust some settings and wait longer for the system to respond each time you upload a file, depending on your connection. Additionally, if you don’t constantly manage settings as platform updates are rolled out, your photos could become publicly accessible to people snooping for information about you or your family.
External hard drives
External hard drives have come a long way since the original “thumb” or “flash” drives were invented around the year 2000. These days, external hard drives come with user-friendly apps that automate many of the things you used to have to do manually. For example, if you are using a device like the ibi by Sandisk, a popular photo saver, the accompanying app makes it easy to automatically pull photos from several different devices, locations, or accounts so all of your photos and videos can be stored and accessed from one central location.
This device is wifi-enabled, so it doesn’t have to be plugged into or managed by a computer connection for multiple devices to be able to connect on your secure wireless network. With the ability to share to other places including social media or private email accounts, you won’t have to worry about losing a tiny bit of hardware containing precious mementos. Best of all, setup is incredibly simple.
Cloud storage
Storing data on cloud sites has its pros and cons. Many sites offer tiered services with a free but limited service for users with small amounts of data. As the years progress, if you are keeping an album of photos as a child or grandchild grows up, or chronicling your hobbies or a loved one’s sports career, the amount of data storage you need continues to add up.
Once you exceed free storage options and your electronic devices are also full, you’ll either need to start deleting files, find a new place to move your files, or begin paying for a subscription service that will keep going up as your storage needs increase with time. At that point, you might wish to export all your photos from one site to another to find a better deal, which might not be as easy as it sounds.
Consider longevity
As people rapidly move into a new realm of high-definition photography and digital displays, the average file size of photos will continue to increase and new file formats or compression rates may need to be implemented. Technology is constantly shifting and both hosted platform compatibility and device software compatibility will need to keep pace with these developments.
While some technology companies come and go in a flash, it can be important to stick with trusted leaders in the data storage industry to ensure you don’t maintain your data on a storage platform that becomes obsolete or ineffective. SanDisk, founded in 1988, has been a leading provider of memory and data storage products for over 30 years, and is constantly adapting solutions to serve the constantly evolving needs of today’s digital marketplace.
