Will your digital memories survive? 10 tips for protecting your photos and home videos

27 Aug Will your digital memories survive? 10 tips for protecting your photos and home videos

We take more photos and videos today than any generation before us.

Birthdays, holidays, weddings, grandchildren, pets, family gatherings and everyday moments are captured almost constantly. Yet there is an interesting contradiction: while we probably have more photographs than our parents and grandparents ever did, there is no guarantee those memories will survive as long.

A box of old photographs can sit in a cupboard for 50 years and still be opened. A digital photo stored on a forgotten phone, obsolete computer or inaccessible cloud account can disappear far more easily.

So, what is your backup plan?

Don’t rely on your phoneYour phone may contain thousands of precious photographs, but phones can be lost, damaged, stolen or replaced. Regularly transfer important photos and videos somewhere else rather than treating your phone as permanent storage.

Cloud storage is useful — but don’t make it your only copyServices such as iCloud, Google Photos, OneDrive and others have made backing up photographs incredibly convenient.

However, access usually depends on maintaining an account, remembering passwords and, depending on your storage requirements, continuing to pay subscription fees. Terms, prices and technology can also change.

Think of cloud storage as one part of your backup strategy rather than the entire strategy.

Keep a local hard-drive backupLarge external hard drives have become relatively inexpensive and can hold enormous photo and video libraries.

Consider keeping a complete copy of your photographs and home videos on a dedicated external drive. Better still, have two drives rather than one.

Hard drives can fail too.

Keep another copy somewhere elseIf your computer and backup drive are sitting beside each other, a house fire, theft, flood or electrical problem could destroy both.

Keeping another backup at a different secure location can provide an additional layer of protection.

Follow the 3-2-1 principleA commonly used backup approach is simple:

3 copies of your important files, stored on 2 different types of storage, with 1 copy kept somewhere else.

For a family, that might mean your computer, an external hard drive and cloud storage.

Organise your photographsTwenty thousand photos named IMG_4837 aren’t particularly helpful to the next generation.Create folders by year, event or family member. For example:2026 – Kimberley Holiday2025 – ChristmasFamily History – GrandparentsFuture generations will appreciate knowing who and what they are looking at.

Delete some of the clutterDo you really need 37 nearly identical photographs of the same sunset?

Periodically removing duplicates, screenshots and poor-quality photographs makes your collection easier to manage and makes the important memories easier to find.

Think about what happens when you dieThis is perhaps the most overlooked issue.

Would your partner or children know where your photos are stored? Would they know how to access them? What happens to your cloud accounts, computers and devices?

Consider documenting where your digital memories are kept and how the appropriate people can access them. Password-management and digital legacy arrangements may also be worth investigating.

Preserve the important home videosHome videos can be even more precious than photographs because they preserve voices, personalities and movement.

Older VHS tapes, DVDs and camera recordings should be converted into modern digital formats before the equipment required to play them becomes difficult to find.

Print the photographs that really matterThere is still something incredibly powerful about a physical photograph.

Create albums, photo books or framed collections of your most important memories. Digital technology is wonderful, but a family photo album does not require a password, subscription or software update.

What will your family inherit?

We may become the most photographed generation in history — but potentially one of the least preserved.

Thousands of family memories sitting somewhere in the cloud are only valuable if somebody can eventually find and access them.

Take an afternoon to check your photographs, videos, cloud accounts and backups. Copy the important ones. Label them. Tell your family where they are.

Your photographs aren’t simply files.

They are part of your family’s history — and some memories are far too valuable to leave to chance.

If this article has inspired you to think about your unique situation and, more importantly, what you and your family are going through right now, please get in touch with your advice professional.

This information does not consider any person’s objectives, financial situation, or needs. Before making a decision, you should consider whether it is appropriate in light of your particular objectives, financial situation, or needs.

(Feedsy Exclusive)