When I was a kid our family photos were all kept in albums. The hundreds of photos were meticulously positioned under the plastic static film on each page by my mum. She was great about writing the dates and locations of the photos on the backs.

Today we’re lucky enough to have plenty of storage in our harddrives and external harddrives to store thousands of photos. The photos can easily be tagged, so we can locate them quickly. Each image file has the date written to it, so tracking when they were shot is pretty simple. But there’s a problem.

If a thief robbed my childhood home he would have stolen the stereo, TV and probably my dad’s scotch. He never would have looked twice at the piles of bulky photo albums, today it’s a different situation. Your laptop and harddrives will be among the first to go should you get robbed.

I’m not trying to make you paranoid. I’m just reminding you to always back up your photos (family videos and audio). If you’re leaving for a period of time you should hide your external harddrives or even store them elsewhere.

Backing up to an external harddrive is also a great way to protect your files if there’s a fire, or if your machine suddenly dies. Once you lose your family photos they’ll be gone forever. Don’t just trust the cloud to store them either, there’s no telling when a service or your account can disappear.