This is your life - Where is it stored?

[Gardenlover]

I recently helped a friend move his computer files from an old computer to a new Windows 11 desktop. Over 15K photos were transferred alone. When my parents died they had tubs of photos, many of them were not marked and we had no idea who they were.

Do you keep hard copies of journals, photos, etc. or are they mostly in a digital format? I see positives and negatives to both. The format and devices used to store electronic media is ever changing; printed media can be easily damaged. Perhaps a mixture of different formats would be ideal?

 

[MACKTEXAS]

I have nowhere near 15K photos in total, nor would I want that many. I'd never get around to viewing all those.

What I do is more involved than this, but just to keep the post simple, all hard copy photos remain in albums as they were before the advent of technology. But from those, I scanned and saved on my laptop the photos that were most meaningful to me, together with photos made after the old hardcopy days, in folders - some by years, some by names.

My favorite photos have been saved to USB drives and sent to the safe deposit box in case of a home fire.

 

[hollydolly]

I recently helped a friend move his computer files from an old computer to a new Windows 11 desktop. Over 15K photos were transferred alone. When my parents died they had tubs of photos, many of them were not marked and we had no idea who they were.

Do you keep hard copies of journals, photos, etc. or are they mostly in a digital format? I see positives and negatives to both. The format and devices used to store electronic media is ever changing; printed media can be easily damaged. Perhaps a mixture of different formats would be ideal?

I have over 50,000 photos stored on 3 external Harddrives and in the cloud...

It used to be over 70k..... but this year I made the effort to cull some... still got far too many....

I also took all the old hard copy family photos , and scanned them into my computer a few years ago...

 

[Rae]

I have some on discs but all are saved in photo albums, too. I hope I can save them all to pass on to my daughter.

 

[Oldeagle66]

I have maybe two or three photos on my computer after all these decades. My computer has mostly movies. Things like journals are still in composition book or paper folder. Some important things I keep on flash drives.

 

[VaughanJB]

I recently helped a friend move his computer files from an old computer to a new Windows 11 desktop. Over 15K photos were transferred alone. When my parents died they had tubs of photos, many of them were not marked and we had no idea who they were.

Do you keep hard copies of journals, photos, etc. or are they mostly in a digital format? I see positives and negatives to both. The format and devices used to store electronic media is ever changing; printed media can be easily damaged. Perhaps a mixture of different formats would be ideal?

My mother is declining, and this is a topic that I've given some time to think about. She has lots of photo's from my childhood. There is even an 8mm movie of my family going to the zoo back in the day. The question is, what will become of them.

I feel like there is an expectation that either myself, or my brother, will hold and cherish them. My brother is 100% not that guy. So it's down to me. But I've given it a lot of thought, and I'm not at all sure I want them.

On the one hand, they're my history. They paint a picture of where I came from. On the other, I have spent a lifetime trying to surpass my roots and distance myself from them. If anything, the thought of them makes me sad.

I am reminded of my pet dog from many years ago. I've written on it before, but the short version is I asked for her ashes to be put into an urn so i could take her home. At the time, I wanted to keep her close. But on day one, once I had them, I knew it was a big mistake. This wasn't my dog, and I didn't feel comfort, I felt sad. It tears at my heart when I see that damn urn.

I'm not sure what'll happen to the pictures, but I am inclined to let them go. It's a past that brings no comfort, only angst.

 

[TeePee]

My mother is declining, and this is a topic that I've given some time to think about. She has lots of photo's from my childhood. There is even an 8mm movie of my family going to the zoo back in the day. The question is, what will become of them.

I feel like there is an expectation that either myself, or my brother, will hold and cherish them. My brother is 100% not that guy. So it's down to me. But I've given it a lot of thought, and I'm not at all sure I want them.

On the one hand, they're my history. They paint a picture of where I came from. On the other, I have spent a lifetime trying to surpass my roots and distance myself from them. If anything, the thought of them makes me sad.

I am reminded of my pet dog from many years ago. I've written on it before, but the short version is I asked for her ashes to be put into an urn so i could take her home. At the time, I wanted to keep her close. But on day one, once I had them, I knew it was a big mistake. This wasn't my dog, and I didn't feel comfort, I felt sad. It tears at my heart when I see that damn urn.

I'm not sure what'll happen to the pictures, but I am inclined to let them go. It's a past that brings no comfort, only angst.

My dogs' ashes are sitting in my foyer waiting to be buried with me. Having said that, how do I know for sure they are my dogs ashes or some other dogs' ashes? I guess I'll never know, but some dogs ashes will be buried with me.

 

[seadoug]

I have shoeboxes of photos that I went through a couple years ago and threw out the ones that no longer mean anything to me. When I'm gone, they won't mean anything to anyone. The important ones are in photo albums. Those are primarily the ones of my parents, my hubby and our friends and families. We take them out and look at them occasionally. Some others are on my phone grouped by Album, backed up by the Cloud, but not all that many. I'm not that technologically sophisticated.

 

[Capt Lightning]

I've cut right down on taking or keeping photos. I'm taking my daughter's advice on this.... for buildings, landscapes etc etc.. you can probably find better photos on the web, so why bother taking them yourself. You should only take photos of unique moments that you want to remember.