Storing Digital Photos

[~Kim~]

Ok, so I'm good with how to store them...sort of.

I store them on an external hard drive and DVDs, but ATM they are also all still on the hard drive of my laptop.
I take lots of photos. I'm trying to improve so practise a lot. I have a DSLR and the photos are huge and it's seriously slowing my laptop down.

So my question is, once you've backed your photos up/stored them, do you delete them (all or some) off the computer?
Should I do that? Shouldn't I do that?
I have a PC too, should I be backing them up there as well (don't use it much at all any more)?

[~Raven~]

Better to have too many backups than not enough I say! If you want to start deleting off your laptop then either replace that with another EHD or use the desktop. I'd also keep a backup somewhere else ie maybe your DVDs at your mum or friends house.
I have 3 EHDs, one of which lives with my mum and I swap that over every month or so to keep it up to date.

You could also look into online storage such as backblaze too.

[Trillian]

I was going to suggest online storage as well. I have all mine at snapfish becuase that's who I use to print them, as well as bigpond also give you online storage for free as well. Gives me a bit more peace of mind.

[Dustmite]

I just want to comment on one aspect / misnomer in the original post.

As a general rule, storing pictures on your computer will not slow it down. If you store them on the desktop then yes it is or can slow them down. Also if you are out of hard drive space then not having enough free space will slow your machine down. But if you have a 100 GB HD with 40 GB free, your pictures as a general rule will not be slowing your machine down.

This in now way means don't worry about backing them up, nor does it mean you should or shouldn't remove them from your local HD.