I Need To Get One Of These...
 

Photokeeper or portable hard drive...

this computer is 7 years old, and i don't want to lose all the pics if something happens to it...

http://www.polaroid.com/products/pro...orage%20Drives

i guess since the Polaroid has the software in it, to just go in and grab pics, it would be simpler...

if i get a hard drive, what would i have to do to it, to configure it, and how would i load all my pics in it...?

which ones are better quality...Western Digital...?

I bought a USB external hard drive (just plug and play) from CompUSA....250 GB for 83.00...best investment I ever made for my PC...now all photos, music etc are there.

AlBigAl,
how do you transfer the photos from your computer to the external hard drive...?

Just move them....highlight and right click...send to folder...select the external...and away they go

Or you can drag and drop entire folders using windows explorer.........

I've got a 750 gig Seagate external from Costco; $100, USB, easily configurable backup software included, backs up every night and if I get over 1 meg of info new during any one session. Also backup a couple USB flash drives to keep in a fireproof safe JIC.

Learned a long time ago to be a backup fiend, esp. photos....had a bad experience or two before there was such a thing as recovery software.

Backing up photos is important. I know better and just lost a bunch of mine.

All the Colorado pics. All of the early bike work, etc.

Print them out and place them in a shoebox in the closet.

A new external hard drive is simply plug & play. After it's plugged in, go to "computer", dbl click on the new drive and add a flolder called "Pictures" or whatever. Move all your .jpegs etc over to the new folder on the new drive. I just drag and drop. Also invest in an 8 gig thumb drive and copy the pics over to the USB drive also and keep in a safe place (preferably out of the house in case of fire). The thumb drive acts just like a hard drive and is also plug & play.

cheers, geeded

Moving files from a logical or physical drive to another drive under Windows is a copy. The original files from the source drive still exist unless you delete them.

All of these are great suggestions. the most important bit is to get em backed up, by whatever method you can or by several methods.
The quickest/cheapest if your box has a DVD burner is to simply create DVD data discs. Your burner probably came with the software and the discs are cheap. They'll hold several gigabytes each. Next cheapest would be the thumbdrive suggested. They're gettin silly cheap these days and the transfer rate is really fast. Transfer is just a drag-drop operation; the only difficulty is remembering all the different folders you have pics hiding in. The some backup drive software sort of automates this for you by scanning the whole machine for image files but its not hard do do this manually either.
The great advantage to using a really huge (100+gigs) external drive over the thumb or DVDs is the drive is big enough to simply make a copy of you entire "My Documents" folder...backing up far more than just your pics.

I just cut and paste the folder to externa hard drive. It came with software for backing things up. But I never learned it. I rename the folder with the date after pasting. It takes 15 minutes, to copy all those files. The back up programs are probably quicker, ut would require some thought. I just come back in 15 minutes and tis done.



Anybody see this digital picture frames, you load your pics in and scrolls through. I though that would be cool. Not sure what its even called.

The digital picture frames look pretty cool. I was thinkin about getting one of the 15" ones.

No doubt, though the USB extrernal drive is a great way to back things up...

Moving moves...copying copies. 2 separate functions in Windows.

I definately recommend and external hard drive for local backups of your pictures. Also, I would recommend an onlie resource to upload your pictures to. I personally use Flickr with a Pro account. Unlimited uploads, makes them available online for posting to your favorite message board, you can download them again should anything happen to your external hard drive like a crash, you can select them online, send them to you nearest Target for printing and have them there waiting for you to pay and pick up when you get there.

If it's important, have them in 2 locations. An external hard drive is just as vulnerable to a crash as an internal.

I bought DPH a digital picture frame for Christmas 2007. Really nice way to show off your digital pics.