iPhoto® '09 Portable Genius

Chapter 16. What Can I Do to Protect My Photos?

It's said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but the photos in your iPhoto library are literally priceless. That's because they can't be re-created at any price. If they get lost or damaged, they are gone forever, with no hope of recovery. Kind of a scary thought, isn't it! Fortunately, with a few simple and relatively painless tasks, you can protect your photos so that you don't ever have to face this irrevocable loss.

Understanding Options for Protecting Your Photos

There are a number of ways to safeguard your photos, and you should use at least a couple of them; using all of them is an even better idea. Because of their value to you, you shouldn't rely on just one method to protect your photos. Each method you learn about in this chapter has its own benefits, as well as requirements you need to meet to use them.

When you consider how you'll protect your photos, the easier the options are to implement and the less you have to do, the better. That's because doing the kind of tasks you learn about in this chapter isn't particularly fun and not necessarily what you allot time for in your day. However, you don't want to let these tasks slip down your priority list, unaddressed until that very bad day when you discover your photos are permanently gone. The less hassle a method is, the more likely you will do it consistently, even to ...