Back in the days when everybody was using film cameras, you really only had a couple of choices for storing your photos. Many people would display them in photo albums, binders, or photo boxes, while others would simply leave the photos in the envelopes they came back in from the developing store. With film photographs, you have the actual photos you could store as well as the negatives to fall back on, just in case the prints were lost or damaged. In the digital age, there are many more options open to you when it comes to backing up and storing your images. These storage devices include media players, storage viewers, discs, DVD's, memory sticks, memory cards, flash cards, portable hard drives- to name just a few! You can even store them in cyber space at online storage sites and specialist photography sites such as Flickr, or SXC.hu Many image storage devices are small, light and portable and some of them can store tens of thousands of images. The beauty of some of these devices is in their flexibility, as many of them can not only store photographs and any other type of files, but can play music and videos too. While digital storage is pretty simple to manipulate, the biggest risk is finding yourself searching for a needle in a haystack if you don't organize your images properly. If you load image after image into a storage area with no folders or file names you will face a tough task locating a specific shot.  Take the time while loading your photos to create folders with a description and date, as well as naming each image, to help you to browse these photos more easily in the future. Some storage devices, such as the camera's memory card, are ideal for temporary storage before images will be transferred to a more permanent device or system such as your PC hard drive or online photo albums. Don't forget that if you store your photos on your computer's hard drive, you can still lose them if the computer crashes or becomes corrupt from a virus. So, if the photos are precious to you, it's a good idea to make sure you save the images somewhere else as a backup. The same can be said for all ways of digital storage as many of the devices such as memory cards or USB drives are small and can easily be lost or damaged. Online storage sites seem to be a safer bet, but you still have no control over other people's servers and sites and accidents do happen.  All in all, it is a good idea to save your images in at least a couple of different places.  Burning your images to a disc, saving them to your hard drive and uploading them to your online photo site will give you three copies in three different locations and should mean that your photos will be kept safe for decades to come.