Keep tarballs Either you share images or download from someone, signed tarballs are convient way to transfer files. It also faster to move between local disks and ensures integrity. Therefore do not remove downloaded tarballs but save them to archive instead. Archived files must be set read-only and carefully backed up. It is best to copy tarballs on a DVD medium. Do not produce large images If your camera produces high resolution images (>16MP), Consider to set smaller image size. Do not be aware of older cameras, consider better lens instead. Reasoning: large images exeed the capacity of absolutely most screens and practially never printed in full resolution. Smaller images well fit on optical media and more easily shared. Get relieble disk Do not use flash drives and SD cards as a primary storage. There is no waranty of redutancy and many manufacturers lie the specs. It may stop working. Use relieble file system Most disks come preformatted EXFAT or NTFS, do not use these file systems. Consider advanced options like ZFS and Btrfs. important! advanced file systems may not allow to fully recover files. XFS should not be used due the fact it is notably hard to recover and has no snapshot features. Never use FAT32 obviously, it does not understand data integrity and is not recommended.