Photos... Storing them

[yas159]

Where do you girls store your photos ? I download my onto the computer then transfer them to cds.. I am always worried someone ie the kids will come across them on the computer if left on there. Are there ways we can hide them safely ? Yas x

[Kaz]

External hard drive!

[MarcyHunter]

Gone cottin choppin.

[Kelly DeWinter]

I store them on refrigerator magnets, picture frames in the living room and on a elecronic picture frame next to the tv

[Karren H]

The woman I hired to take photos of wear my clothes keeps them for me! Lol.

[Julogden]

If you're mainly hiding them from your kids, bury them in nested hidden folders and set things up so that hidden folders aren't visible. You can also encrypt your photos so that they cant' be viewed without a password. And as others have mentioned, put them on an external hard drive that you only hook up when accessing your CD photos. Put it away where the kids won't find it when you're done.

CD's/DVD's are too easy for someone to find, and it's easy to forget one in the drive, then someone else comes along and takes a look at what's on the CD in the drive and your secret is out. Also, optical storage doesn't last forever, so you need to make new copies every few years.

Carol

[Kelly DeWinter]

The woman I hired to take photos of wear my clothes keeps them for me! Lol.

Karen, hon, I know you take a hard knock at the rink at times, but I have read the above sentence 30 times and I still don't understand it !

[lingerieLiz]

Easy! Go to www.truecrypt.org/ and download it or any other encryption software you prefer. Load them to disc and label the disc corrupted. Then tell anyone they have great family photos, but they can"t be read now but maybe someday. Anything less is a risk.

Now be sure to remember the password or you will never see them again. I have a unique one that I share with no one. I only use it to get to my other passwords.

A person does not have the time or resorses to recover the file/disc without the password. Posting them somewhere else or hiding is a sure way to have them discovered. If you pass on they will probably be discarded or 100 years from now someone might be able to decode it, but do you care?

[christina s]

I have a flash drive i store in an old video game box

[Karren H]

Karen, hon, I know you take a hard knock at the rink at times, but I have read the above sentence 30 times and I still don't understand it !

Yeah... Really needs additional punctuation to make sense! Lol

[StarrOfDelite]

Once the photo gets onto your hard drive it is almost impossible to erase by any means except a full wipe of the drive,. I'm not an expert, but I've been told that almost anyone who knows the rudiments of information recovery can with the proper programs access every photo that has ever been saved on a computer's hard drive. The type of entities which have the requisite hardware and software to do the job include sophisticated metropolitan police departments, many private investigation agencies, almost every computer repair shop, and lots of internet hackers.

[Sheila11]

I put them in a empty beer can and leave it on the front lawn. Nobody ever picks that up.

[Rachel Morley]

There was a thread about storing photos safely in the "technical help section" - click link below to go to the thread.

http://www.crossdressers.com/forums/showthread.php?159024-Saving-documents-securely

I myself use Flickr and also ImageShack for display purposes, but I back up on an external hard drive and I also back up in the Cloud too. I use Microsoft's "Skydrive". It gives you 25 gigabytes of free storage. All you need is a free Hotmail account. Here's a link if you're interested: http://explore.live.com/skydrive

[docrobbysherry]

After my older girl moved out, I used rotating pics of Sherry as my wallpaper! My younger one finally said, "Those ladies look scary, daddy!"

Since then, I loaded most into an external hard drive. Then, when I got a new computer I tried to download them. It's been 6+ months now. Still haven't figured out how to do that!

[ashley79]

Easy! Go to www.truecrypt.org/ and download it or any other encryption software you prefer. Load them to disc and label the disc corrupted. Then tell anyone they have great family photos, but they can"t be read now but maybe someday. Anything less is a risk.

Now be sure to remember the password or you will never see them again. I have a unique one that I share with no one. I only use it to get to my other passwords.

A person does not have the time or resorses to recover the file/disc without the password. Posting them somewhere else or hiding is a sure way to have them discovered. If you pass on they will probably be discarded or 100 years from now someone might be able to decode it, but do you care?

Came here to say this! Truecrypt is awesome.

[Beverley Sims]

The woman I hired to take photos of wear my clothes keeps them for me! Lol.

Ahh! A case of engineers dyslexia...

[Beverley Sims]

If you're mainly hiding them from your kids, bury them in nested hidden folders and set things up so that hidden folders aren't visible. You can also encrypt your photos so that they cant' be viewed without a password. And as others have mentioned, put them on an external hard drive that you only hook up when accessing your CD photos. Put it away where the kids won't find it when you're done.

Carol

Give a kid an unopened safe with secret written on it.
Bingo! open in 5 seconds.

Tell a kid to put the laundry in the hamper,
They can't find it.

They love encrypted and hidden folders.....NO!

[Donniesr]

I keep mine on a flash drive that I keep on my person at all times. Also because of good and easily accessable data recovery programs (Ihave several), I save my pics straight from the camera to the flash drive.. Thats the best way I can think of to keep them from public view..My kids know almost as much about computers as I do, which isn't REAL extensive, but if I had your computer, I could recover your deleted pics, if there were any..

[sara.s]

I once wrote a password protected encoding and decoding program to store files. you should be able to find such softwares available for download.

[SallyS]

I have a dual boot PC system Linux/Windows 7.

All my private stuff goes on Linux (with password), and all the family stuff goes on Windows 7.

I back-up onto a 2.5" External HD, and keep it safe!!!

I have printed photo's in the past, and kept an album in the loft....but the cold and damp degrade photo's:sad:

[donnalee]

Compress the file with winzip and use the password protection option. The password should be something you remember easily, but no one except you knows (things from childhood are good). Then cut and paste onto a flash drive and keep it in a secure place, like on your person. Delete all of the picture files. When you delete files in windows, they are actually moved to the Recycle bin, so you need to empty it to actually delete the files. One of the problems about deleting things on most computer systems is they don't delete the file, just the name, so it's not very secure. As most graphics files are on the large side, programs run from the command prompt or DOS can sort by file size and no name, rename the file(s) with the correct extension and it/they will magically reappear. However, if you defrag your files, the file fragments will move to a different area than the other fragments point to. Do this a couple of times and the file becomes extremely difficult to piece together and you should be pretty safe.

[Shari]

I keep mine on my private Shari e-mail. I created zip folders of my pics and used my regular e-mail to send the zip folders to my Shari account. I created a folder on Shari Yahoo where I download and store them all.
Any time I want to see them, I simply go to my e-mail and look. If I want them on my computer, I can download them back to the desktop and open them here. I can then download them to this site or any other one I might want to "show myself off". Lots of room in cyber space to store your pics.
As long as nobody knows your alternate e-mail or the password, they're quite safe from any prying eyes.

[Vickie_CDTV]

Ultimately, it depends on your level of sophistication, the kids level of sophistication, and how determined the kids are to snoop around the computer. Others' advice so far is spot on, you just want to make sure you don't do something to lock yourself out of the pictures too.

A better long term solution would be to get an older computer for the kids to use (you can find older computers that are still useful and capable of casual everyday web surfing at yard sales, flea markets, craigslist and the like for less than $50.) Sharing a computer (for personal use) with others is like sharing a toothbrush or a pair of underwear; you could but it isn't very "hygienic" and it is cheap enough for everyone to have their own.

And make lots of copies of those pictures (not just one disc), all media can fail and you don't want to lose them.

[Renee W]

I keep all of our photos (general photos and CD related) on thumb drives. Thumb drives are so inexpensive now a days they make great external storage. They are also small in size so they would be real easy to hide if you needed to. I keep 2 complete copies of all our photos on mirrored thumb drives, that way I always have back-ups.

If you really want to keep your photos away from prying eyes, you could even go down to storing them on MICRO SD cards. These cards are smaller than your little finger nail and thinner than a credit card. Put your photos on one of these and you could keep it in your wallet.

[Launa]

I store them on refrigerator magnets, picture frames in the living room and on a elecronic picture frame next to the tv

This is making me jealous!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[gender_blender]

Modeling portfolios for my professional stuff. All imperfect images are archived on my External HD.

[debbeelee1]

Just keep your pics on a Cd and label the CD "My colonoscopy pics"; no one will ever look at them!

Seriously, there are some good tips here. I've got over 20 GB it pics and videos that I don't want people to see. I keep mine in my computer, on an external hard drive and on DVDs that are hidden in my house. Normally I don't have to worry about it, but a few times a year when the kids and grandkids visit, it's another story.

Long term, we are all going to die or become incapacitated in some way. Eventually, someone is going to go through all of our stuff and they will find everything.My wife knows where everything is and she knows what to destroy should something happen to me. If something happens to both of us, my step daughter that I am very open with, also knows where everything is and what to destroy. This way I do have a back up and it's pretty reassuring that I'm covered.

Of course finding this stuff would make for some pretty interesting eulogy material!:eek:

[linda allen]

Once the photo gets onto your hard drive it is almost impossible to erase by any means except a full wipe of the drive,. I'm not an expert, but I've been told that almost anyone who knows the rudiments of information recovery can with the proper programs access every photo that has ever been saved on a computer's hard drive. The type of entities which have the requisite hardware and software to do the job include sophisticated metropolitan police departments, many private investigation agencies, almost every computer repair shop, and lots of internet hackers.

Many disc defragmentation programs have an option to "wipe" remants of old files off the drive. This will do fine for most people. If you think the police or FBI will be checking your hard drive, you'll have to shash it with a sledge hammer cut it into pieces with a band saw, burn it with a torch, and then throw the pieces into the river off a bridge or from a boat in another part of the country.

[linda allen]

I was in the hospital a few years ago and my adult daughter came to the house to help my wife pay my bills (electronically). Apparently she accidentally found naked photos of my wife because she said something to me about it. I can only hope I hadn't left any of me on the hard drive.

[linda allen]

I forgot to answer the question. My photos are on a password protected USB thumb drive that's kept in a desk drawer, not in the computer.

[KayleeDahl]

External Hard drive secured by Truecrypt (as mentioned by other posters).

Even the FBI would have trouble accessing it if they wanted too...(but why would they?) no chance of someone turning on the computer and finding them.

I keep my banking info, customer data etc another truecrypt partition too... it is so handy!

[NicoleScott]

I keep mine on my computer, password protected. Other family membes have their own computer anyway. The pics are also on CD's, and also backed up on a portable (backup) hard drive.
But I also wanted to say that I started a scrapbook over ten years ago, printing favorite photos and pasting them into a scrapook, which is kept with my clothes, shoes, makeup, etc. Hey, if I get busted, I really get busted. ha ha The scrapbook is fun to look at occasionally, reminding me of some really good dressup sessions.

[Debra Russell]

I keep mine on several SD cards and on my lap top - lots of copies, a file or two for resized internet pics and for differert occasions. Every one in my famly knows to one extent or another anyway, just so pics are not ready available and out of sight is all I am conserned about..............Debra

[paulinescotlandcd]

I gave up the PC years ago and put them on Flickr and some on Photbucket

[Jilmac]

Since I've only been using a digital camera for a year, (I got it as a gift last Xmas), I'm still learning how to upload, download, and unload all the pics I take. I wouldn't have a clue how to store them on a CD or any other electronic media. However I have several shoe boxes full of stored photos that were taken on an old technology called film. It worked quite well for me when I used it and I didn't have all the frustration of dealing with a *$#&@ computer. The only disadvantage is finding enough space for all those shoe boxes.

[vikki2020]

Photobucket. I love it. It's safe, easy, and has nice editing tricks. If I can use it, anyone can--for sure!!

[Crysten]

The woman I hired to take photos of wear my clothes keeps them for me! Lol.

Quote: "Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?" -- I believe Karen has. =)

[Crysten]

And.....for those of you who haven't seen this, the actual response to the above quote, which I find to be most enlightening:

“You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve been further even more decided to use even go need to do look more as anyone can. Can you really be far even as decided half as much to use go wish for that? My guess is that when one really been far even as decided once to use even go want, it is then that he has really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like. It’s just common sense.”

Just for the curious, the original post was from a Japanese person attempting to comment on a video game. I think he made a valid point, myself.