Kinda Sorta Archiving Your iPhoto Library

Illustration: Art Explosion

For a few years I would create CD archives of my iPhoto Library. Ten years later, it bloated to almost 10GB. Messing with segments in DropStuff, DVDs, archiving in Extensis Portfolio just became a hassle. I simply have no archive of these images. So I needed a stop-gap measure until I get around to putting them in a real optical archive (DVD-R).

So a few months ago I purchased a 1TB USB hard drive called My Passport at the local Best Buy (now an empty massive building in a mall). Smaller than a trade paperback, this was a perfect stop-gap. It had plenty of room for my growing iTunes library, which includes many audio tapes and family history interviews in digital format (not all, unfortunately). After quickly copying everything over, I put it in our fireproof safe. If you want to see exactly how I did it, see this article about backing up your iPhoto library at About.com.

So if you can't deal with archiving things in the ideal manner, find something...anything!