I have mine on CD's plus a 2T external hard drive. I bought a 500 gig external hard drive on the weekend to take on vacation with me (my sister will let me use her computer to save my pictures on, then put them on the external). I'm going to back up my back up with the 500gig when i get home. That way, if the 2T craps out (or visa versa), the 500gig will be good. and I'll also have the cd's just in case. I have some that are over 5 years old and the pictures are just fine.

I think it's best to print them like they used to be.

I have mine on CD, on my hard drive, and stored online.

Mine are on a hp portable external hard drive called a simple saver. I back up all of personal stuff on it every 2 or 3 months. Trip pictures or family pictures are saved as soon as I download them from the camera card. I save copies of the orig and of the edited photos. I also have another hard drive that they and my music are on. I have converted my music to mp3s, I don't want to lose that. It took me a long time to do that with over 1,000 songs. I also have them all on my PC. So in 3 different places they should be safe.

Thanks for telling us about the CDs. I have some photos that way, so I'll try to remember to back them up on the hard drive.

I don't store photos on my computer for long. It takes too much room.

I always back them up in 2 places.

1) I don't use CDs, I use DVDs because of its larger capacity. Pretty soon, I'd be using blue ray which has larger storage capacity.

2) I back them up in external drivers. I have 2. One is 500GB and the 2nd one is 1T (terabyte), plenty of room on both drivers.

On a side, I also have a small digital photo storage unit to help me downloading photos from the memory cards on the go. It's like a small external driver with different size slots for different size memory card.

It fits in my purse nicely and I don't need to stock up on memory cards nor need to bring my laptop on trips. I need only 2 to switch back and forth when downloading. Once I'm home, I just plug the unit to the computer via USB and transfer the photos over.

I store mine on an external hard drive too. It is 2 Terabytes and is set up for mirroring, so 1 Terabyte stores my photos and the other Terabyte stores a second copy.

CD storage is ok if burned to a quality CD. A few years ago, some inexpensive CDs had a problem with the reflective backing. Also, you must protect CDs from elevated temperature. Higher than normal room temperature may allow the media to relax and dull the data pits. Copying data to a new CD every 5 years is recomended practice. Archival quality CDs should be used if you can find ones with this identification.

Your instructor recommended flash drives (AKA thumb drives). I disagree. Flash drives are only a little better than CDs.

Flash drives may have evloved since they were first introduced, but I have not heard anything to the contrary. Before I retired, I watched their development in trade magazines and this is my information (15 years old). Flash drives have a "keep alive" battery inside. A voltage source is required to maintain the states of the storage junctions. The current draw is very little, but the data will dissappear if the voltage fails. A lithium-ion battery technology was chosen because it was one type that can hold a charge for a long time. Typical life is 10 years. After that, the thunb drive may become unreliable. Recommended practice: Copy data to a new flash drive every 7 years and toss the old drive (after it has been cleaned of data or destroyed).

When buying a flash drive, make sure it is a new one and not one that has been sitting on the shelf for several years. Keep in mind that the life of the unit depends on the life of the internal battery.

The jucntions of flash drives do wear out. A junction is good for about 10,000 rewrites and then it may fail. To address this problem, there is an algorithm built in that causes data writes to move around the chip such that all of the storage area gets used equally. Therefore, your archived data should be put on flash drives that are not used very much. Flash drives used as a hard drive experienceing thousands of writes/rewrites will eventually fail. The smaller the capacity, the sooner it will fail. Very large capacity drives will last longer since each junction gets written less often.

Do not store your data on a flash drive that is used for games. Thousands of rewrites can occur over the life of a game.

Static charges imparted to the electrodes of a flash drive can destroy it, or at minimum, corrupt the data.

I also use DVD's (stored in a safe deposit box at our bank) and an external hard drive.

I have tons of cd's, some dvd's,two external harddrives and some online storage of my photos. I have photos that are over 5 years old on cd's and so far they are fine. I really think, I am leaning more towards a external harddrive to store mine, getting way too many cd's.

Mine are stored on my computer - backed up to our server when DH does the weekly backups of our system.

the very best method is using mixed media and off location that way everything is not in one place. I do use CD / DVD along with flash drive and external hard drive but I store important stuff at an online storage locker so that should something happen to my home I still have access to them from online. I like ADRIVE they give a huge 50gig free storage and it is super easy to use.
http://www.adrive.com/

I also have a lot of them saved on my digital frame

I have hundreds of photos on my PC, thousands of songs in reg format and again in mp3. When I right click on C drive and look at the "pie", I have only eaten a very small slice of that pie. LOL

I just lost a lot of things that I was saving on a flash drive. Thankfully, it was only a back up of another flash drive so nothing was permanently lost. Now it looks like that particular flash drive is ready for the trash. I have two external hard drives and several flash drives.
Digital is great but not for long term saving. The old way with film cameras and negatives is still best, IMO.

gmom74, film is terrific unless you rip the picture and the negative is lost.

Some are on CDs or DVDs (those hold more).
I also have them on my computer.
And they're all backed up on my external hard drive (which is kept in a location other than my home).

Some of the most important originals are stored in a location other than my home.

I don't think I have any hard-copy photographs that are not in picture frames, and everything in a picture frame has a digital back-up, because eventually, if that frame gets even a smidgen of sunlight, that photo will fade.

(I also will try to dissuade anyone from using those Kodak-type photomaker copy machines. The life-span of one of those photos is at the very bottom. I already see deterioration in some I made about 4 years ago. So don't even consider making that kind of "copied" photos for back-ups!)

This thread reminds me I need to back up all of the wallpaper I have collected in the last two weeks.