Jane Elliot Posted June 20, 2010 Share Posted June 20, 2010 I just lost a heap of photos when my laptop's hard drive crashed. I need a better system for organizing and storing my photos. Right now I have all my camera disks full because I'm afraid to erase them. We were sledding in the mountains yesterday and I could only take a few pictures because I was out of disk space. I've tried Phanfare, but our internet is somewhat slow. It takes forever for the pictures to download and more than half the time the download is unsuccessful. The whole time it's downloading, internet is extremely slow for everyone else in the house. So, I'm not sure online storage is a good option for us. I feel like a total idiot when it comes to photos. How can I get more organized? Do you have a great system or a book you could recommend? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChristusG Posted June 20, 2010 Share Posted June 20, 2010 I'm a photographer and take lots of photos....of my family, of events, sometimes clients. There's no way I have time to back them all up on DVD's and stuff like that. I use an online back up service called Carbonite. You set it up and designate which folders on your computer that you want backed up. And then, you sit back and do absolutely nothing ever again. The program runs in the background whenever you are not busy on the computer and it backs up the designated folders. If your computer ever crashes, you can download your photos from the internet and back onto your computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChristusG Posted June 20, 2010 Share Posted June 20, 2010 (edited) Oh, one more thing as far as organizing. Here's how I do it: I make a folder for each year. Then within that folder I create a subfolder for each month. I put photos in those according to when they were taken. Also, within the yearly folder, I put a subfolder called Trips and Events. And within that I will make more subfolders for different trips or family events (basically anything that will have lots of photos) and put the corresponding photos in those. Here's an example of my folder progression if you click the folder on my computer called "My Photos." This is the inside and I'll give you a more in-depth of the year 2009: Year 2006 Year 2007 Year 2008 Year 2009: January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009 Trips and Events 2009 Disney Vacation Oct. 2009 Christmas 2009 Tennessee Trip May 2009 Family Reunion 2009 Year 2010 (I tried to indent so that you could see which section were subfolders, but it wouldn't let me do that....it kept lining all the lines up on the right side of the screen. So instead I just skipped lines between sub folders. Hopefully it is still understandable.) Edited June 20, 2010 by ChristusG Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elegantlion Posted June 20, 2010 Share Posted June 20, 2010 My computer came with a program that automatically sorts them by date. I do back my up on CD every once in a while, also DH has an external hard drive where he backs up our entire computers once in a while. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jane Elliot Posted June 20, 2010 Author Share Posted June 20, 2010 Thank you! This is all very helpful. Dh installed a new hard drive last night for me. He had mentioned Carbonite, but I wasn't sure about it because I was afraid it would just be another headache like Phanfare. It's good to hear from someone who's used it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C_l_e_0..Q_c Posted June 20, 2010 Share Posted June 20, 2010 For pictures of vacations, I make sure we have a printed album. Always. They can burn, but they can't crash... I have a USB external drive with a backup software. My entire disk gets backed up every night. Thus, all pictures exist in at least two places. At the end of the year, I burn all of that year's pics onto a DVD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFSinIL Posted June 20, 2010 Share Posted June 20, 2010 I order prints as soon as I have cropped, etc. (Elements 6 here), copies for each of the kid's albums, self, grandparents as I want. Costs $$, but cheaper than "film" days when I had to order multiple sets of every shot when dropping off the film, or go back for reprints. I would like to back up and keep everything, too - may have to look into that Carbonite another poster mentioned! I do still have EVERY negative I ever took, from ye olde days, in neg sheets in binders, dating back to my first SLR in 1977!!! I am a little wigged out at not have a digital equivalent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
linders Posted June 20, 2010 Share Posted June 20, 2010 I take the pics, DH is in charge of preserving them. When needed, he downloads from my camera into a file for that month. At the end of each month he burns 2 CDs - one to keep at home for my hard-copy needs, one stowed in our bank safe deposit box. The number of CDs in the safe deposit box became overwhelming so recently he got DVDs with much higher capacity so he can store 4-6 months worth of photos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frontier Mom Posted June 20, 2010 Share Posted June 20, 2010 I'm a photographer and take lots of photos....of my family, of events, sometimes clients. There's no way I have time to back them all up on DVD's and stuff like that. I use an online back up service called Carbonite. You set it up and designate which folders on your computer that you want backed up. And then, you sit back and do absolutely nothing ever again. The program runs in the background whenever you are not busy on the computer and it backs up the designated folders. If your computer ever crashes, you can download your photos from the internet and back onto your computer. This is what I use. Worth it and very quiet in the background. Love Carbonite. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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