Need help/ideas

I have 3-4k pictures between my memory card and laptop. I wanted to consolidate them all into one source, whether I put them all on some sort of external drive or burn them to cds. I do have less than 1/4 of them on shutterfly. Mainly want to get them off of my laptop before my ac adapter busts again, because in 5 yrs I've purchased 4 cords for it. The next time I'm just going to buy a new laptop. What works best? I'm not sure what I should do, so any input is greatly appreciated.

Thank you!
Amy
:)

3-4k? Do you mean 3000-4000 pictures or total file size? Most pictures of high definition are at least 1 MB each so I am curious.

Saving online is good but it might take awhile to upload or download. Get a portable external hard drive that gets its power from the computer. If you backup online you should make sure you can FTP right into your folder and not upload one at a time.

I had one that had an A/C adapter. It lasted less than 6 months. The power supply went bad, surged, and took out my data. This was 10 years worth of math resources for teaching math. Even the specialists couldn't save it. I am feeling the pain. (This was a western digital. I'm using a seagate now.)

And should you get a new laptop soon, most of them interface with the portable hard drives well without having to install software.

I'll be interested in seeing replies to this, also.

Up to 4 years ago, I kept albums. I have 32 albums, my Mum started them when I was born, and I kept them up.

Then I got Sugar and Lacey, bought a digital camera and . . . . :( I kind of think I want to print them all out and get them in albums. How would I do that, for a reasonable price? I know I won't do it using my printer. :eek:

I have photos on 4 flash drives, plus the tower PC in the home office.

So I'd like ideas as well.

MrSpunkysmom-
It's 3-4k pictures, I have no idea the total file size for all of them combined.
That was another concern, if i save them to external hard drive picking one with enough memory size.

Amy

Hard drives keep getting bigger and bigger, and less expensive - you should have no problem finding an external drive to fit them all for not a lot of money!

3catcondo:

Sounds like you have anywhere from 4 Gb to 10 Gb of photos. Most of the external hard drives start at 250 Gb so that is a good place to start.

Are you planning on adding more? If so, you may want a larger drive or consider archiving on this new drive and placing new pictures on another new drive. Hard drives do not work well when more than 50% full.

Freedom:

Do you have photo editing software? Microsoft photo gallery does okay, snapfire does not. The ability to Batch edit is a must. Jasc Paint Shop Pro was great for the price but Corel bought it. ARGH!

Picasa allows you to create albums but it likes to create albums of your whole computer. Every time I ask it to add a folder it doesn't just add that folder but every folder on my computer.

I need to upgrade my photo software and I'll let you know what I find, but it might be awhile. I'd be interested to hear what software others here use.

External drive, and

www.battdepot.com - power supplies and laptop batteries.

I don't know what "batch edit" means.

Just now, the photos are in folders by date, as that is what my camera software does.

I have Photoshop Elements. I was thinking to just "write" on each photo the date and who is in it, in a corner, and then send them off to be printed . . . somewhere.

This is a very interesting thread for me too.:) I have an old desktop windows xp computer that has probably thousands of photos on it. I recently bought a new desktop computer and I did put a few of the better pictures of my cats on my new computer. Most of my photos are on photobucket but they have all been resized and I know that this isn't a secure place to store them. I'm also wondering what my best option would be.