What I'm FOCUSED on

August 31, 2024

Focus-

Back to School: The Perfect Time to Get Organized with a Photo Organizer

 

 

As the summer days draw to a close, parents and students alike prepare for the annual transition from beach towels and barbecues to backpacks and books. The back-to-school season is an exciting time filled with fresh starts, new opportunities, and cherished memories. It's also a time when families can find themselves overwhelmed with the influx of new photos—from first-day-of-school snapshots to fall sports events and holiday gatherings. This makes the back-to-school period the perfect opportunity to get organized with a photo organizer.

The Overwhelming Photo Avalanche

In today’s digital age, it’s incredibly easy to accumulate thousands of photos on our smartphones, tablets, and computers. Come September, you'll likely find that you've added hundreds of pictures from summer vacations, family gatherings, playdates, and more. These treasured moments are, without a doubt, worth capturing. But without a systematic way to manage them, these moments can get lost in the digital shuffle.

A photo organizer is an invaluable tool that helps manage this avalanche of images. Not only does it allow you to store photos safely and efficiently, but it also offers features like tagging, sorting, and creating albums, making it easy to access and share your memories 

​

September 7, 2024

Focus-

The Vital Importance of  Backing up your Photos- External Hard Drive Use

Don’t be in denial of the fact that our photo memories are at risk!!

What’s the top 4 things you say you would save in the event of an emergency in your home?

*Family members    *Pets      *Photos

Don’t get caught with your photos not being saved / not prepared

Printed photos are vulnerable to:

Fire …Hurricanes  …Floods

Digital pics are Vulnerable to:

Hard drive crash… Phone breaks or lost.. Cyber Attacks/Hacks… just hitting that wrong button

Even experts in technology and photo management aren't immune to tech troubles. Recently, a client lost a hard drive full of photos. Here’s what happened and what steps you can take to safeguard your data. 

The Hard Lesson 

First, always ensure that any external hard drives you use for data storage are backed up to another hard drive or a cloud backup solution. In this case, a 2TB external drive was regularly backed up using BackBlaze. This fantastic company offers a variety of backup options for your entire computer and multiple external drives at a reasonable monthly cost. Other online storage options are FOOREVER, LIGHTROOM, PERMANENT and MYLIO

Since thehard drive was backed up with BackBlaze, I could easily restore the data to another external drive or clients main hard drive if there's enough space. 

The Lifespan of Hard Drives 

No hard drive is a safe long-term storage solution. All hard drives have a limited number of 'read/write' cycles before they fail. Typically, most hard drives fail between 3 to 5 years. The clients failed drive was an SSD, which is generally more reliable than traditional spinning drives that many of us have used for decades. 

Tips for Purchasing and Maintaining External Drives 

1. Date Your Drive: When you buy a new hard drive, place a date sticker on it to keep track of its purchase date. 

2. Choose Trusted Brands: Opt for reputable brands like Samsung and LaCie. 

3. Automate Backups: Ensure your drives are backed up on an automated

​

​