How to save photos from computer.

[netibiza]

Having just lost most of my photos on my computer (cos it broke) next time I want to be able to save them all. How do I do it. I know there are dongle type things, would that be a memory stick or pendrive or what, and how would I use it, thank you.

[Count-A-Strong]

External hard drives are really cheap now. You simply plug them into a USB, look under 'My computer' in windows explorer and it will appear as a drive e.g. mine is 'Hitachi (F:)' copy all your photos to this and then delete from your computer. Simples!

[netibiza]

Well that sounds easy enough, will have a go when computer returns, amny thanks. btw could I plug this extra hard disc into another computer's usb so someone else could see them, saves printing for family!

[Old_Geezer]

It is not where they are kept so much it is that they are in more than one place (and you keep a check that the medium used isn't deteriorating over time).

Multiple back up options. Count suggests a hard drive. Yes you can just plug in a pen drive if you like. Another option is a CD or DVD drive that can write to a disk.

When installed, as Count states, it should just appear as another drive that you can copy to. Instructions should come with the drive.

For real security you could keep a copy at someone else's home, just in case fo fire or whatever. Share out the memories to all the family.

[Old_Geezer]

Drives can be plugged and unplugged. If it works on your PC it should do on someone elses. but I'd advise just giving them a DVD full of the files rather than unplugging drives.

[Count-A-Strong]

CD's are notoriously unreliable and images degrade on them over time. To answer your further Q - yes you can plug an external hard drive into someone elses machine, no problem.

[VHG]

>Having just lost most of my photos on my computer (cos it broke)

Photos can usually still be retrieved off a broken computer (unless it was the hard disk that broke).

It is fairly easy to take a hard disk out of a computer and connect it to another computer (there are a number of ways of doing it so I wont go into details).

[VHG]

I always think it is VERY important to have important files (like digital photos) held in a numer of places.

If you do copy them to an external hard drive then ALSO keep them on your computer (if there is room) as that is then 2 places they are held.

I would ALSO copy them to CDs or DVDs so they are also held there as well.

As you have already discovered you can never have too many backups.

[VHG]

In fact I have TWO external hard drives, and everything is backed up to BOTH hard drives just in case one of them breaks (it is VERY easy to drop an external hard drive).

With some planning you will never need to lose important files again.

[Count-A-Strong]

Another good way of backing them up is to post them onto a website 'album' such as Flickr. Friends and family can see them this way too.

[RATTER15]

You could also upload your photo's to a site like photo bucket for free but at the end of the day you cant beat keeping all your photo's backed up on CD,DVD or an additional drive. I have three hard drives in my PC, I regularly switch between these three drives as all have windows installed and I keep identical copies on all plus I keep copies of important files, pics etc on DVDs.

[netibiza]

wish I had known all this. I have a dvd with some photos on it done by a friend, but whenever I thought of doing it, I wasn't sure if a normal dvd 4.7 gb was big enough. Thank you all for advise, will do some of this from now on!

[VHG]

> I wasn't sure if a normal dvd 4.7 gb was big enough

You can get hundreds (maybe thousdands) of pictures on a single DVD disk.

And if you need more DVD disks then just use them.

I have my digital pictures stored on about 80 CDs (I do each one twice).

I even backup the contents of these CDs on to DVDs (3 or 4 CDs to each DVD)

I also back up the contents of each CD on to an external disk.

I am nothing if not thorough.