How to Store Your Photos

SD Card
Big Things In A Small Package

Where do you store all your photos?  That’s what I started to wonder after I filled my 120+ GB SSD drive on my computer.  Even if you have plenty of room on your computer it’s a good idea to store a backup of all your pictures/files someplace safe.  I’m not going to get into super techy details because most of you just want to know the bottom line and that’s what I’m gonna give you.

Now you might be thinking… Why wouldn’t I just use a USB drive?  Well, you could.  I think USB drives are great for TRANSPORTING photos, just drop the USB stick in your computer back and your good to go.  For storage though I prefer the SDHC card because of its small size and the convenience of pulling it out of my camera and putting it in my drawer.  If I have a hundred of these little buggers they would hardly take up any space, I’d have plenty of room left over for my troll collection (remember those?  I’m totally kidding… there is no way my collection would fit in a drawer).

The PNY Professional Class 10 Hi-Speed SDHC Flash Memory Card is hands down the best I have every had the pleasure of using.  If you read the reviews around the internet the majority of people out there agree.  And let’s be honest, for roughly $18 you can’t find much better bang for your buck.  Now when you start to search for different SD cards you will read a lot about the different classes of cards (typically 1 to 10).  For our purposes (transferring any and all types of data including HD video and large pictures) we are going to stick with the fastest… class 10.  Why?  Great question.  You want to not only be able to transfer your giant high def videos of Mr. Wigglesworth the cat chasing the laser dot but you also want to be able to snap consecutive pictures quickly.  With this card (class 10) I am able to reach the full potential of my cameras 9 frames per second continuous shooting.  Most places will tell you class 6 is adequate for shooting with a DSLR but do you want to be adequate or would you rather be prepared for anything?
There is 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB sizes available (the 8 and 16GB are so close in price that I’d recommend just going with the 16, the 32GB jumps up to $28).  The 32GB would be ideal for backing up your large iTunes library or HD videos.

If you don’t have a dedicated SD card reader on your computer you can turn any USB drive into a SD drive with the Sandisk MicroMate we talked about in this post.

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