No. The rule is: one copy on the device you use, one on a drive you touch once a year, and one with a person — a sibling, a cousin, a child. Three places, checked once a year.

What's the simplest backup rule?

We keep it, and you keep two more copies. Pianyu keeps your finished books so you can reopen and re-export them; you keep one copy on a drive and one with a person.

I have 10,000 photos — where do I start?

Start with the four moves: list where the photos already are, choose one place new ones go, arrange an afternoon's worth into a record, then export and give a copy to someone who will keep it.

How to Preserve Family Photos Long Term

Most family photos aren't lost dramatically. They're lost quietly: a phone that isn't replaced, a chat app that stops syncing, an album site that shuts its server down one year and simply isn't there the next. The pictures don't burn. They just stop being reachable.

Preserving them doesn't take discipline. It takes a small system, run once in a while.

The four moves

1. Keep — stop the scattering

Your photos already exist in six places: two phones, a camera roll, a chat app's saved folder, a cloud album you forgot, a hard drive from 2016, and a social site where you posted in 2010. The first move is just knowing where they are. Make a list — five minutes, and the "I think I have photos somewhere" feeling stops.

2. Gather — one place to put new ones

Not the "best storage" — a habit needs a single front door. When there's one obvious place a photo goes the day it's taken, collection takes care of itself over years. If you add a line about the day — typed or spoken, thirty seconds — the pile becomes material instead of data.

3. Arrange — because a stack isn't a record

Ten thousand files on a drive is storage, not memory. The difference between a folder and a keepsake is arrangement: order, context, captions, someone reading it. This is the step people mean when they say "I should organize my photos someday" — and it's the step that finally needs an afternoon. Arranging is what we built Pianyu's algorithm for: it notices what you've collected and shows you what's already becoming a story or a life. It never writes you — the words and facts stay yours, exactly as said.

4. Hand down — the copy that has to exist

A backup protects the files. Handing down protects the meaning. One exported book, given to one person who will actually keep it, outperforms any storage system — because it's a thing someone wants, not a thing someone maintains. This is why the book format has survived every technology change before it: albums got thrown out, moved, lost — but albums got given. The ones that were given survived.

The backup rule that's actually enough

Don't do "the cloud." Do we keep it, and you keep two more copies:

One on the device you use — where Pianyu does its work;
One on a drive you touch once a year (buy it, label it, set a reminder — this is the copy people skip, and it's the one that saves them);
One with a person — a sibling, a cousin, a child. Export the book, send the file.

Pianyu keeps your finished books in the Vault so you can reopen and re-export them — that's your working copy, living in your browser, on your device. The yearly card set waits in the card library until you take it. We hold things for you; that's a convenience, not the plan. We keep it, and you keep two more copies — that's the system. The lost-photo stories always start the same way: one place that was enough. Three places, checked once a year. That's enough.

Once a year, an afternoon

Set it on something you already remember — a birthday, the week after a holiday, the start of school. One afternoon:

Empty the inboxes: camera roll, chat saves, scans from the family pile.
Let the collection show you what it's become (Pianyu will suggest what's ready to be a story or a chapter — you decide).
Export the year's book. Download the PDF.
Copy it to the drive. Send it to the person.

Gather once a year, and nothing scatters. The books stack up year by year — fragments, then stories, then, eventually, a life.