Consumers rate DVD the "safest" storage method for digital pics

Where do you keep the photos you don't want to lose? Print them out? Keep 'em on a hard drive? Store them on the web? The somewhat surprising answer from most consumers, according to a survey by trade group PMA: Burn them to DVD.

The variance among the 10 different storage methods tested in the survey isn't huge, but it's significant: On a scale of 1 to 5, consumers gave DVD a 3.9 rating for the long-term safety of images and a 3.5 to paid online services, the lowest rating received. (Rating services poorly makes sense: Stop paying your bill and your photos may very well vanish.) Prints and photo books earned middling ratings, which also makes sense: They aren't subject to digital degradation like data on flash cards or hard drives are, but they fade over time. Still, the average print will probably last longer than the average CD, even if loses a bit of color along the way.

So, are the people right? Is DVD safer than any other medium? It's certainly not a bad choice. The only hazards with optical media storage are scratches, warping due to heat, and the now-rare and controversial threat of disc rot, which again can be mitigated by careful storage of your optical media. Hard drives scored second place in the survey. Again, not terrible for short-term storage, but all drives will go south sooner or later, so they're not perfect for archival needs.

My solution? I treat photos like any other data, which gets two levels of backup: All data is mirrored onto hard drives on two computers, and another copy is backed up online. With pictures I have another level of security in that copies are regularly emailed to parents and siblings, so in a worst-case scenario, most of my pics could probably be recovered through simple begging.

How do you keep your digital pics safe from loss?