Kodak’s Digital Learning Center has a wealth of useful information on taking, printing, sharing and storing digital photos and images. Here are some tips the site offers for storing your digital masterpieces.

* Backup. Don’t just use your hard drive as the backup for your digital camera’s memory card. Desktop hard drives can fail, and when they do, your images are gone forever. Instead, schedule a regular time to back up your digital images off your hard drive. Kodak recommends monthly backups or when you get to the point where you have more than 50 images stored on the desktop.

* Use CDs, not CD-RWs. Kodak recommends storing photos on CDs, which are cheap (at about $1 a pop) and sturdy. Although CD-RWs, which can be erased and used many times, may be cheaper, they aren’t the best for long-term storage. If users accidentally write over an image, it’s gone – not the best proposition for critical storage needs.

* Try DVDs. Kodak says DVDs, which can hold far more images than CDs (4.7GB vs. 700MB), are becoming increasingly popular. Due to their price, they are probably best only when storage needs are huge. Kodak says a typical DVD can hold several years’ worth of photos.

For more information, visit Kodak here.