Meticulous photo organizer receives the gift of a lifetime of family pictures saved forever on ArDrive
Photos from the Philippines in Susan’s collection
Susan immigrated to Canada from the Philippines many decades ago. She moved with her husband, three kids, and a total of five boxes of possessions including her photos.
Within the Filipino culture, hard work and determination are applauded at an individual level. But they also understand that they wouldn’t have gotten to where they are if it wasn’t for the hard work and determination of their ancestors and current community.
Her pictures are some of the precious few things that allow her to keep the connection with that history and pass it onto her grandkids.
For instance, there are people in her pictures who are no longer with us – grandparents, uncles, aunts, even cousins. Living far from their family compound in Manila, these pictures are some of the only things the family has of these loved ones.
As with all of our stories and digital photos the question becomes: How are we going to keep these around for generations to come?
Gift of history through photos
Hannah, Susan’s daughter-in-law, has learned over the years how much importance Susan puts into family history and the photos she uses to capture that history.
Hannah has also learned that her plan to pass on these photos was to put them all on USB memory sticks (with additional USB memory sticks as backups). This may work for a few years, but isn’t a safe or secure way to save photos for generations.
Whatever age we are, we all have the same problem: how do we store our most important digital files for long periods of time?
New technologies like ArDrive have come along to make affordable, reliable long-term storage of data possible. But Hannah knows that it may be beyond her mother-in-law to learn yet another technology.
As her mother-in-law has gifted so many photo albums over the years to her loved ones, Hannah decided to gift her a digital photo album of all her photos on ArDrive so Susan could easily share and pass the photos onto whoever she wishes – and that will last for 100s of years!
It brings her joy to know that her loved ones (even the ones she will never meet) will have a record of the history of where they came from.
Recent photos from Susan’s collection including one with her granddaughter and
daughter-in-law, Hannah (center)
How Hannah used ArDrive
Hannah used the ArDrive web app to put Susan’s photos onto ArDrive.
She started off by creating an account and a private password that she can easily pass along to Susan.
After creating the account, the ArDrive web app allowed Hannah to upload all of the photos on the USB memory sticks with the same folder and file structure that Susan had meticulously cultivated over the decades.
All the files and folders were uploaded as private data – so only Susan will have access to them, and those whom she chooses to share them with.
Each folder can now be shared with a simple link (at no extra cost) with whichever family member she wants to have those photos.
All of the photos will now outlive all of her grandkids, and will, with no hyperbole, be a source of history for generations to come.
Results for Susan
- Susan gets her own ArDrive account with all her photos in a Private Drive
- So far, 2,554 photos and 4 videos have been uploaded
- Cost: 0.8 AR or around $24 USD (as of April 2022)
- All photos were placed into Susan’s existing file structure
- All files and folders can be easily shared (at no extra cost) with anyone she wants to share
- A great gift for Susan! Smiles all around!!!!