But before you entrust precious memories into any service, make sure to read through the terms of service.

Think of those black and white snaps of your grandparents as kids, the silly photos you took on a disposable camera and more. Plus, your photos will be compressed to a lower resolution - they won't look as good if you want to print them out.īetter yet, there are dedicated services to preserve shots, whether they're from your phone, a digital camera or that film camera you used years ago.

Though Facebook and other social media platforms can hold your photos, not everyone may be comfortable making them the keepers of your memories. Even if your computer is lost, you can still access a cloud-based account with your photos attached.Ĭhoosing the right option is critical. But a digital backup is the best way to safeguard your memories. You also can make a photo book as a backup of your all-time favorites and store it somewhere like a fireproof safe deposit box. Portable hard drives can store your memories and they fit nicely in a bug-out bag. I learned this lesson the hard way when my family's Dell took a turn for the worse in the early 2000s, and took countless pictures with it.

If your computer crashes, or you fall victim to a virus or a nasty data breach, you can still lose them. Scanning your prints and saving them on a computer isn't enough. Even more so if all you had were prints of your family's old pictures. This is true to some extent - you can easily buy furniture, curtains and kitchen appliances again. When a natural disaster hits and your possessions are lost or destroyed, people sometimes offer the phrase 'things can be replaced' as comfort. This story is part of Road Trip 2020, CNET's series on how we're preparing now for what could come next.

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