Real World Digital Photography, 2nd edition

Backup

With film photography, your images are relatively safe. Provided you could protect them from high humidity, fire, and other threats, your images would last for decades. With film, you don't really have a viable option for backing up, because film duplicates don't retain the quality of the original. You could scan the images to produce digital images, but then you have the same issues to contend with as images that were digital in the first place.

With digital photography, you have to guard against harm to your images in a number of ways. Besides keeping your computer and media safe from physical harm, you run the risk of periodic hardware failures that can cost you a heavy price in lost images. Fortunately, unlike with film, you can back ...