Family photos taken with a digital camera are some of the most treasured items for dads and moms. In this episode of The Lab, Daddy Clay and Daddy Troy discuss how you can archive digital photos, as well as how to backup the files to keep them safe. How often should you upload your digital pictures from your camera to the computer? Should you transfer the files to a hard drive? Can you do backups using sites like Facebook or Flickr or should you consider a backup service like Mozy? Check out this video for answers to these and other important data backup questions. DadLabs Ep. 602 is brought to you by BabyBjorn.

Daddy Clay: So the other day in the office Daddy Troy asked me a very interesting question.
Daddy Troy: Your house is burning down. You got the kids out safely and you're allowed to go back in. Like you ever would be allowed to go back in but you're allowed to go back in and grab one more thing - what would it be?
Daddy Clay: Duh, computer. I think everybody would say the same thing. Which indicates that this has become the most important family treasure for most guys.
Daddy Troy: Because you play a lot of video games?
Daddy Clay: Exactly. Because I'm about to beat Plants vs. Zombies. No, because it's the archive that contains all of our precious family photos and other materials that we really want to keep safe. So today we're talking about backing up and keeping safe your digital photos. Speaking of safety and security, today's show is brought to you by BabyBjorn. Ecotec certified, it's the safest, best designed baby gear out there. BabyBjorn. Obviously the first thing you want to do to keep your photos safe is get them out of the camera.
Daddy Troy: There are some people who tend to have really big cards in their camera, leave tons of pictures on them, and never go and actually put them on to their computer.
Daddy Clay: One, you fall in the pool. Boom. 700 pictures, precious family photos, gone. One of the ways that I found useful is using this Eye-Fi Wifi SD card. You put this in the camera and it automatically transfers the photographs from your camera to the computer anytime the camera is on and in the same room. So Daddy Troy, when you're transferring photos from your camera to the computer, what's your protocol? What's best practice?
Daddy Troy: Do a complete dump. Keep them all and save them for a later date just in case you need every single photo you took.
Daddy Clay: Well that's interesting because I have to cull the herd. I mean I bring in the photos and about 30 or 40 percent of them, it's out of focus, it looks crummy, it looks blurry. That probably happens to you too?
Daddy Troy: No.
Daddy Clay: No, because you're a professional photographer.
Daddy Troy: I've seen your pictures.
Daddy Clay: Yeah, so I definitely have to cull the herd and I also like to take things and put them into categories and into albums. I should disclose, I'm a Mac guy. I have 8,100 photos in my iPhoto archive and that takes up about 40 gigs of space, which seems to me like an awful lot. How much you got?
Daddy Troy: 8 terabytes.
Daddy Clay: 8 terabytes. So once you've got them transferred from the camera to the computer, isn't that backed up enough? Isn't that good enough?
Daddy Troy: No, you have to get them on to another hard drive. I guarantee you you know somebody who's hard drive has failed because you're looking at him. Here at DadLabs, we've had three hard drives fail of the many that we've had. At home, I've had multiple hard drives fail as well. I've got a lot there.
Daddy Clay: Do you like the automated process or what's your backup process? I'm using Time Machine which is an automated process. It's a Mac product, backs up everything on my computer to the hard drive. I just hook up the hard drive and don't pay any attention to it. Is that the way you roll or what's your process?
Daddy Troy: I really think it depends on the dad. How technically savvy he is as well as how much patience he has for figuring out the scripting process for backing things up. Some dads like it, some dads I've talked to have had some difficulties with that.
Daddy Clay: Any suggestions as to, I mean if some of these guys are gonna fail, are some hard drives better than others? Should we shop for a certain amount of storage?
Daddy Troy: Statistically, all hard drives have some sort of failure rate, so really, as long as you're going with a name brand. You can use your local Fry's or Best Buy, Tiger Direct maybe to help you consult with which ones are name brand. Seagate, LaCie, Mac store, Western Digital are all pretty good brands.
Daddy Clay: Do you really need a terabyte?
Daddy Troy: Yeah you do because how many gigs is this card right here?
Daddy Clay: That's 4.
Daddy Troy: That's 4. You know, you take a bunch of these and all of a sudden you're starting to fill up a 600 gigabyte hard drive.
Daddy Clay: Do you need to do even further backup? Maybe do something online?
Daddy Troy: A second level of redundancy is actually advisable. I don't think it's all for all families. A great way to do that would be through Facebook or Flickr. You're a .Mac guy. That's how you backup your stuff.
Daddy Clay: How about those services like Mozy. You play a small monthly subscription, less than 10 bucks a month, and they'll back up all the data you want.
Daddy Troy: I'm intrigued by those but it's a developing industry so it hasn't stabilized yet in terms of what the product is and what the value is to the end user. They're still trying to figure out how they pay for it. So I'm still a little reluctant to be an early adopter to that because my family photos are too important to me to be an early adopter. However, my dad's using it right now. He thinks it's a great service. It's real easy for him to use. And I think it'll probably be the way we go in the end. And one more issue is when you upload photos to another service and it's different between, among all these services we've talked about. But some will modify the photo as you upload it and make it a smaller version for them to post, if you're using some sort of service that's not specifically a backup service. And if you wanted to ever print that beautiful photo of your daughter or son then you would not have the high res version.
Daddy Clay: Which brings up another way to back up. My wife loves it when I print out the photos. She just wants a hard copy that she can pinup on her board at the office and of course, you can always order, a lot of online services including Mac that's offering these books. You can print out books of your family.
Daddy Troy: In fact we did a DadLabs episode on making these books. You should go check it out over at DadLabs.com.
Daddy Clay: Well, thanks again to our sponsor BabyBjorn. Safe and secure, ecotec materials, the safest you can find, BabyBjorn. Daddy Troy, thanks a lot.
Daddy Troy: We'll see you guys over at DadLabs.com.