This is a sponsored post on behalf of M-DISC, the best way to store digital photos forever, and the Mom It Forward Blogger Network. All opinions are my own. 
Don’t you wish that our ancestors had the technology that we have today? Don’t you wish that there were thousands of pictures of them doing everyday things? Don’t you wish you could have videos or audio recordings of them living, singing, celebrating so you could hear what they sounded like, if they were funny, or how they spoke to others? I certainly do! But, unfortunately, many of us have very little to remember our ancestors of past centuries by beside a handful of pictures, maybe some old journals, and any public documents referring to them, often only found on micro-phish. How grateful we should all be for the amazing technology that is available today to help us capture and preserve our stories, our legacy for centuries to come.
I have been thinking lately about the importance of family storytelling, family history, and everyday family traditions I am creating with my family. I know how important family history is for kids. I want my children to be able to keep their personal histories for themselves and their kids and their grandkids. I want all of those thousands of pictures I’ve taken over their lifetime to be around for them to share and remember the fun times we’ve had. I want them to also remember me, what I was like, and what I did.
Living in the digital age, there are so many great advantages of recording and sharing memories. Some people take pictures of their children every single day. Some take 1000s of pictures during one 5-day vacation. We also easily capture videos of first coos, first crawls, first steps, and first birthdays. We write blogs dedicated to our children’s lives, their milestones, their stories. We have so much recorded, but will it last?
Have you ever really thought about what you will do with the endless amounts of digital media you have of your child? Do you regularly print pictures and photographs in order to have hard copies in case your hard drive were to crash and you’d lose them all? Or do you perhaps use a storage cloud with unlimited storage so that you don’t have to keep them on your computer? But, don’t you wonder what would happen if the internet were to fail or your cloud provider stopped providing that service? Don’t you wonder the best way to store digital photos is?
Storage and Archiving Options
Prints, Jump Drives, and Hard Drives
The thing is that many of us, myself included, think that by backing up information on jump drives or external hard drives that our pictures, videos, documents, and other information will be preserved for a long time. But, what we don’t realize is that that isn’t true.
Hard copies (prints), jump drives, and hard drives will not last forever. In fact, our digital images and video are far more fragile, and more difficult to preserve over long periods of time than printed images, which is why if there are photos you really care about, you should print them out! With all of our solely digital information, we may actually be setting ourselves up to become the forgotten century, according to Vint Cerf, VP of Google. And that’s a pretty scary thought considering the vast amount of information we record every month.
According to Mozy Online Backup “Every week 140,000 hard drives crash in the USA” and according to Gartner Technology Research “31% of all PC users suffer from data loss each year.” And FastCompany reported that only 50% of hard drives will survive until their 6th birthday. So, if you have previously stored images and data on a hard drive, you may want to see if those files are still there!
So, hard drives and jump drives are actually not a good long-term solution for your digital storage needs, or for family history preservation, as these devices were never designed for long-term archiving. They’re built for quick access like writing, sharing, and transferring, but they will all fail over long periods of time. It’s surprising that they won’t even last until our children graduate from middle school!
This is because solid state hard drives and flash drives are electron-based and don’t retain data long term. Traditional hard drives and magnetic tape uses magnetism that is just as fragile over long periods of time. A recent research presentation by Seagate’s Alvin Cox shows that solid state drives can lose data if they aren’t powered on, especially in warmer environments. “A powered-off drive in 104 degrees Fahrenheit may start seeing data loss after a couple of weeks.”
Storage of all these digital records is the most difficult problem in information technology today, according to data storage expert Robin Harris. No one wants to lose digital information, especially our important family memories. So, we still need to find the best way to store digital photos and memories.
The Cloud
Many people today choose to use an online storage cloud to store digital pictures and information.
In general the cloud is a good storage option, because cloud operators have a business reason to see that your data is preserved. However, data losses and data corruption do occur anyway. Kroll Ontrack conducted a survey of companies that use the cloud and it revealed that “53 percent of those surveyed have experienced five incidents of virtual data loss in the past year alone, with 12 percent reporting even more than that.”
Cloud storage systems are great for sharing files and accessing files from anywhere, but they are solely dependent on having internet connectivity in order to access them. The data is also not within the control of the user and presents a lack of privacy and security. The cloud can be costly when used for archival purposes as several companies charge you storage charges.
If the data is precious, archive technologists recommend at least one hard copy of your own.
So, if we really want to archive photos, and our memories, preserving them for centuries, then we need to find a best long-term storage solution for our digital photos. And that is why I am excited to share with you the best way to store digital photos forever: the M-Disc.
The M-DISC
The M-DISCM-DISC is a unique permanent storage solution that preserves photos, video, and important documents practically forever.
It is a hybrid of older technology (optical disc) and the latest information retention technology. The M-DISCs stores your information by engraving the information into a patented rock-like layer that has been proven to last 1,000 years as it is resistant to extremes in temperature, light, humidity, heat, magnetism, and EMP. M-DISC cannot be overwritten, erased, or corrupted by natural processes, and a single M-DISC can hold up to 100 gigabytes of information. It is also compatible with any DVD or Blu-Ray drive so you can access your data anywhere, anytime, for a very long time!
M-DISC is a fantastic archiving solution that creates a “hard copy” (something they can hold in their hands, and have complete control over) of treasured memories, and important information. It’s perfect to preserve family history!
M-DISC is the brand leader in personal archiving because it’s economical (users can store large amounts of data on an M-DISC for one low cost, as opposed to monthly cloud fees.), simple to use, and will preserve data for more than 1,000 years. None except the M-DISC were designed to retain information in pristine condition for a lifetime and beyond. 
Can I just say that in many ways I am grateful I haven’t uploaded content to jump drives for my children’s baby books yet? Blessing in disguise! I had purchased jump drives specifically for that purpose, but just haven’t done it yet, but am now glad that I didn’t bother! I would have been wasting my time and money thinking I was preserving their baby/toddler/preschool memories. How upset I would be to later discover that they are not there in just 10 years’ time!
I have been able to try out burning my own M-DISC at home, using a portable Blu-Ray Writer and a 25GB M-DISC BD-R. I am so excited to be able to burn memories from my husband and I’s life and our children’s lives onto this disc and to put it safely in their baby books! I look forward to being able to preserve more of our memories as we collect them, as well as information about our ancestors!
Special Discount Code
Because I want everyone to have their family histories, their memories, their digital photos, and their important documents stored forever, I am sharing a special 15% off discount code for M-DISC in their U.S. eStore! Simply enter my first name – KATELYN – as the promo code when you are checking out.
Otherwise their products can be purchased on Amazon.
So, tell me, what steps are you taking to store digital photos and archive photos and information for your family’s history?
Lara says
Sounds like a really cool solution! I have just been fighting with one of our computers today because the USB port stopped working and I couldn’t access my external hard drive. I finally fixed it, but it is true that it isn’t going to last much longer limping along the way it is! I will have to look into the M-disc. Thanks for the coupon code!
Kerry says
I almost learned the hard way how important it is to back up my photos. We switched computers and not everything was transferred over like we’d thought. The old computer is no longer with us, and I panicked when I couldn’t find some precious photos. I was literally sick to my stomach. Thankfully I had backed up some of them on an external drive. Thankfully it still worked. But I need a better option. This may be it. Thanks for sharing this great product with us!
Montserrat says
Oh man, I am so bad at backing up my photos! I do have an external hardrive dedicated to just photos but it is over 8 years old. Thankfully it still works! I better get crack-a-lacking on finally printing off the photos books I have been trying to make with those past photos.
I’ve never heard of the M-Disc. I’ll definitely be checking it out. Thanks!
Kathleen says
This sounds really great. I actually have a triple back up of my stuff, the cloud and 2 different hard drives. Oh, maybe 4 because I have a google storage thing too. I will check this out.
Hezzi-D says
Hmm.. That’s interesting. I’m always worried my photos will be lost. I only print out a few a year now, which is sad. I used to love looking at photos, now they are just on my computer. I do need to back them up though!
Katelyn Fagan says
We almost never print out pictures… Always on that “to do list.”
Mary Fran says
I ALWAYS print my pictures. I have never trusted digital. I want a hard copy that I can hold in my hands. I don’t want everything to be on a computer. Although I do burn discs of pictures, I have never trusted them either. PRINTS. PRINTS. PRINTS. Call me old fashioned.
Billy Bob Greyback says
M-disc sounds like a great idea. Can’t help but wonder what aliens will think of all the history of digital imagery when they enjoy our photos and videos over coffee.
My concern are 2; “What does it take to burn onto these discs?” And “What does it take to read these disc now, and in the future”? What reason is there to believe anyone will be motivated to continue makeing the hardware and software required to access the digits on M-discs in 10 or 25 years, much less when your grandkids want to see it?”
Katelyn Fagan says
1) All it takes to burn on one of these discs is a bluray burner that is compatible with burning on M-Discs (and many are). They aren’t very expensive.
2) A simple bluray or DVD player will read the disc just fine. And while technology is constantly changing, we still have microphish readers, tape players, and other such old reading devices, often specifically to access old information, for archival and history purposes. Will that be the case in 100 years? I don’t know. But, perhaps there will be a different, better method created in 50 years where all of these discs can then be stored in that way.
Dayana Pears says
Great article and nice tips! I could just add that one more useful tip. To save on space no matter where you are going to make a storage of your photos, you should use this: http://www.winzip.com/win/en/features/photo-sharing.html to compress them to save on valuable space
Stefanie Garcia says
Thanks for sharing! As a photographer I know how vital it is to store photos. I enjoy reading other peoples new ideas.
Pete says
By the looks of it, an M Disc is basically a Bluray disk. While they “may” last up to a 1000 years, an optical disc will always suffer the same fate as any regular optical disc (DVD/Bluray) in that they’re still susceptible to scratches. So you only have to accidently drop it, scratch it and you’ve lost memories as well.
Personally, I still think having multiple backups is the answer – so have a backup of your backup (whether that be cloud storage or a couple of HDD). As for HDD not lasting that long, well that depends on how they’re treated. Every year HDD’s get cheaper and larger by the terabyte. Changing your HDD every 5 years or so as it starts to get full shouldn’t cost the earth either.
My backup solution is a home server that keeps everything on it, arranged in a RAID configuration (so if a disk starts to fail, it can be swapped out and rebuilt). Failing that I have a total meltdown when this is happening, there’s also another stack of disks (JBOD) to backup the server at regular intervals. So again, if one of these disks dies, I don’t loose everything, only whats on that particular drive. And photos are also backed up on a third drive, just to be sure.