A couple of points...
You people that still use IE are generally the ones that have all the problems. IE doesn't handle this site well, and seems to have all sorts of problems with other sites, too. Dump IE and get a better browser and your problems will go away. Try Firefox or Chrome.
Second... posting photos directly from your computer is a bad idea, and if you do it, you won't be able to do it for very long. This site limits you to a very small amount of photo hosting space, because this site is not meant to be a photo hosting site. The right way to do it is to open a photo hosting account, put all your photos there, and then just post the link to your photo)s) here. That way, the actual image remains parked on your photo hosting site, taking up space on their servers (as they are designed for) instead of taking up space on this site's server.
And finally... I have a free Photobucket account. I've had it since 2005 or so. I have thousands of photos there, and as of today I am at 19% of my allotted space for a free account. Never has even one of my photos disappeared from my PB albums. I suspect that you people who think you're having PB problems are actually having web browser problems, and my guess is that most of you are running IE.