David Pogue's Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

Backing Up Your Photos

Bad things can happen to photos. They can be deleted with a slip of your pinkie. They can become mysteriously corrupted and subsequently unopenable. They can get mangled by a crashed hard disk and be lost forever.

Any kind of computer file loss is heartbreaking. But losing one-of-a-kind family photos can be totally devastating, and in some documented cases, even marriage-threatening. So if you value your digital photos, you should back them up regularly—perhaps after each major batch of new photos joins your collection.

If you've already got an automated, up-to-date, whole-computer backup system in place, then never mind; you're covered.

You're also about 4 percent of the population.

iPhoto Backups

Backing up your whole iPhoto library to another hard drive is exceptionally simple, since the program stores everything—photos, movies, keywords, albums, and so on—in a single file in your hard drive. Open your Home→Pictures folder, and there it is: the iPhoto Library icon. Drag it to another hard drive, and that's it; you're safely backed up.

If you prefer to back up onto CDs or DVDs, you can do that, too. Note, however, that what iPhoto can make on its own is something called iPhoto discs. These contain not just your photos, but a clone of your iPhoto Library as well. In other words, an iPhoto disc includes all the thumbnails, keywords, comments, ratings, photo album information—even the unedited original versions of your photos that iPhoto keeps secretly tucked away. ...