Sunday project: Scan, save and protect now
Jefferson GrahamThis week, Trevor Hughes saw up close the devastation that comes with those massive California fires, when people found their belongings and memories burned up, leaving them homeless in a flash.
Outside of the devastating human toll, "When you're watching and looking at a disaster like this, it really forces you to think about what you own, how safe it is, and where your valuables are stored," says Hughes, a USA TODAY reporter who covered the fires in Paradise, California, that turned an entire town to ash.
Things have been very rough in Malibu, Thousand Oaks and other Southern California communities, where many were evacuated.
Our hearts go out to everyone who suffered this week in Paradise and Malibu and encourage all our readers to help those who really need it. A GoFundme page has been set up for them.
Meanwhile, sorry to be a nag, but this week's fires remind us, in prepping for unexpected emergencies, to take a few minutes this weekend and finally get around to digitizing our important stuff.
Hopefully disaster will never reach us —but then you never know. We'd still possibly lose the couch and bedroom set in a massive fire or other form of destruction, but there are ways to make sure the wedding album, photos of the kids growing up and other priceless memories don't disappear.
Ditto for a copy of your passport, deed to your home, marriage license and other important papers. And if you really want to get anal, we can start digitizing our home movies, and private video and audio collection as well.
Your tools:
Your phone
The cheapest option, even though it's lower quality, is to use your camera app to snap photos of both important documents and photos. We like the Google Photo Scan app, which uses software to compensate for scratches and glares in the photo. But if you're serious about backing up your life memories, please opt for the options directly below. Just do the photo scan in a pinch.
Scanning
Scanmyphotos.com ($145 to scan 1,800 photos, free shipping), iMemories.com (49 cents per photo) and others will scan shoeboxes worth of photos and digitize them. If you're uncomfortable sticking your analog photos into a mailer and shipping them out, visit your local FedEx Office location and ask for the Sony ImageStation machine. You can scan around 100 photos onto a CD for around $5. But you'll have to stand there and do each photo one by one. The bulk scanners are a lot easier and quicker.
Backup--hard drives
The problem with drives is that they will eventually fail. But if you're uncomfortable with online storage and being susceptible to potential hacking, this is one alternative — as long as the drive is placed outside your home, in a safe place. The best deals are on traditional, external hard drives. You can pick up a hefty 4 TB model now for as little as $100. These are the ones that will fail, especially if you move them around. Another idea — spring for a more expensive, but safer solid state drive, which have no moving parts. You can buy a 500 GB drive for around $100.
USB Drives
You won't get the kind of storage as on a hard drive, but if you don't have that many photos and videos lying around, invest in some USB drives, using the same technique we just spoke about — fill them up and store somewhere else. You can pick up a 256 GB drive for around $50.
The Cloud
Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft's OneDrive and Apple's iCloud are the most popular tools for backing up ySour stuff. Apple is only for photos and videos; the others can include papers and other documents. You can get free introductory rates from Apple, Google and Microsoft for just a handful of gigabytes, but it won't get you very far. You can pay $1.99 monthly for 100 gigabytes with Google or $3.99 for 200 GB. If you scan all your papers, this approach will work. But if you're adding in your entire photo and video collection, you'll need more space. Look to spend anywhere from $59.99 to around $100 yearly for either 1 or 2 terabytes (that's 1,000 GB) from the main players.
Have questions about the digitizing process? We're here to help. I'm @jeffersongraham on Twitter, Facebook is jefferson.graham and e-mail is jgraham@usatoday.com
In other tech news this week
—Cord cutting numbers for this year are actually worse than expected for the industry. Analysts had tallied it at 1.1 million so far, but this week market tracker S&P Global Market Intelligence pegged it higher at 1.2 million, leaving just 91 million subscribers to cable or satellite.
—New products: Google introduced the long-awaited Night Sight feature to the Pixel 3 phone, the ability to shoot in low, low light. Amazon released the Fire TV Recast, a DVR with no monthly fee, and a microwave that takes commands from the Alexa voice assistant. Additionally, Dolby released some super high-end $600 headphones.
—Facebook found itself in more hot water this week, after a bombshell New York Times report outlined how the social network knew about Russian interference before admitting so publicly. The company defended itself in response, and said CEO Mark Zuckerberg wouldn't resign.
This week's Talking Tech podcasts
Our take on Facebook Portal: We love the video chat, but the other features are worthless.
R.I.P., Stan Lee: We play back our extended interview with Spiderman co-creator Stan Lee from 2012.
Review: Amazon's new no-monthly fee DVR.
Alexa, cook me some popcorn: Edward Baig talks about the new Amazon Alexa enabled microwave.
Our guide to the Black Friday deals. The stuff we've reviewed this year that are really on sale.
The Apple Stores in the midst of a massive remodel and re-imagining. And I love what I see.
That's it for the Talking Tech weekend news wrapup. By the way, if you haven't heard, Black Friday and excessive sales promotion starts next week. Subscribing to the Talking Tech newsletter is free. Just click http://technewsletter.usatoday.com, listen to our daily Talking Tech podcast on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher, and follow me (@jeffersongraham) on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.