Protect Your Holiday Photos With These Simple Steps

While you are enjoying AND taking pictures of your family during this holiday time, make sure you protect those precious memories.
One of the best tips is NEVER let iPhoto erase your photos off your camera or iPhone.
Here’s what you do.
1. Hook up your camera or iPhone.
2. Let iPhoto import your photos.
3. When iPhone is done, it will ask if it can erase your photos off your device. Say NO!
4. Quit iPhoto.
5. Run Time Machine to back up all of your new data.
6. Once your backup has completed, then it’s safe to erase the info off your iPhone or camera.
The trick here is to always have you data in two places as once. Most accidental data loss happens when folks are moving data around. Let your back up run automatically, and let iPhoto do its import automatically. You can also “burn” your photos right to a CD or DVD right from iPhoto. CD’s only cost about .15 cents, so this is a cost effective way to double your back up. These CD’s or DVD’s can be given to family member and/or stored off site, so that in addition to your Time Machine back up, you can also have an off-site back up as well.
Also, if you get a new Mac (or you’re giving yourself one) for the holidays, and you have plans to pass your old Mac off to someone else, pay attention to this!
During the holidays or in the New Year, people start moving their data around, so they can get rid of, sell, or give away an old Mac. DO NOT format your old hard drive UNTIL you have fully tested and check to ensure all of your data has made it to the new computer.
Don’t format your old computer until you’ve run a backup on your new computer, and have your data in TWO places. We also suggest waiting a few days, and then format your old Mac in preparation to give it away. Every year we see folks with plans like this, destroy their data too soon, and then realize too late that something terrible happened during the transfer and related re-gift.
You can read more about this topic at this previous MacMedics Blog post.
Questions? Just call us! 1-866-MAC-MEDICS