How to safe images safely

[Alan Fairhurst]

Hi list. I hope someone can advise on the best media for saving images. I lost faith in CD's when I found many images becoming corrupted. So! I bought an external hard drive, a 2.2 GB drive...... I saved hundreds of images on it then disaster struck!
I found that every fourth image would take 2 minutes or so to open. But, one particular image would not open. It quite literally locked up my computer. I waited ten minutes and....nothing! So I had to do a manual shutdown. Guess what? now my computer can't detect the external drive so I've no way to access the images.
My conclusion? There are no easy or cheap ways to photography. I really am going back to Rollies. At least I'll have hard copies. In effect...a two day shoot - over a thousand photos - have all gone with the wind.

[Stemmy]

Backup to DVDs for me - Quality DVDs that is no cheap rubbish.

Touch wood no problems yet. All images are backed up in three different places.

[Alan Fairhurst]

Hi Martin. I know your right but I recently asked PC World to install a DVD rewriter on my PC. I was told they could not do it. My PC is a HP Iconnect with Windows ME, 6 years old, and would not have enough memory. So...I'm faced with buying a new computer.
That means XP! It frightens me... I've got so much on my computer that I would lose, third party programs downloaded from the internet. Plus the bugs I've heard of with XP! I really don't know what to do.......!

[Renee Marquis]

I am in the same ball part as you... I have been burning and safing on cd... trying to go DVD.... but cant get them to burn on it...just me... not very computer person.... I save all my org. and then after I cut, edit I save again on cd.... starting to collect lot of cd's...... I just bought an external 300 hard drive but not yet dared move them over..... again its the computer thing....
I want to hire an computer assistant, eititor person... but have not luck... I just emailed my local photography schools looking again.... keep fingers crossed.....

[Alan Fairhurst]

Don't worry about moving your files to the hard drive, just make sure you keep the originals just in case. By the way, I'm still in love:swoon:

[tonymidd]

Guess what? now my computer can't detect the external drive so I've no way to access the images.


Hi alan, look here
http://www.cardrecovery.com/?rid=google&kid=cr0107

[Alan Fairhurst]

Thanks Tony, I'll give it a try.

[Dotty.c]

Hi Martin. I know your right but I recently asked PC World to install a DVD rewriter on my PC. I was told they could not do it. My PC is a HP Iconnect with Windows ME, 6 years old, and would not have enough memory. So...I'm faced with buying a new computer.
That means XP! It frightens me... I've got so much on my computer that I would lose, third party programs downloaded from the internet. Plus the bugs I've heard of with XP! I really don't know what to do.......!

NO your not, firstly find an independant computer service guy he will be able to upgrade your machine in all likelyhood for about £150, you can buy writers and install them yourself. My pc is much older than yours and I could have had it updated, but my man had some pc's come in recons twice the size of this one for £100, so I have bought one which will never see the internet, it's just for work, but it is internet ready.

[StuG]

My PC is a HP Iconnect with Windows ME, 6 years old, and would not have enough memory. So...I'm faced with buying a new computer.
That means XP! It frightens me... I've got so much on my computer that I would lose, third party programs downloaded from the internet. Plus the bugs I've heard of with XP! I really don't know what to do.......!

If you've used Windows ME for 6 years I can't believe you're worried about XP. Get XP Home Service pack 2 and it will be considerably more reliable than ME, which was a notoriously poor version of windows. You may well find that with a more up todate driver for your external drive that it is recognisable again.

We have been using external hard drives to store Invoice archives for some time and have never had a problem.

And Dotty is right too upgrading your current equipment is a valid option, I upgraded my home PC myself about 2 years ago, I kept my hard drive, my monitor, mouse & keyboard. I bought a new box & a motherboard bundle and built it myself. It's simply a matter of following instructions and connecting the right cables. Believe me, if I can do it anyone can :grin: but you could always get a local guy to do it for you if you prefer.

checkout the costs at www.novatech.co.uk (http://www.novatech.co.uk)

Whichever route you take though, I strongly advise moving away from Windows ME.

[BarryM]

Il back Xp up, i think since the start it is the most awsome OS there has been. Ive had it on my laptop for 5 years now, and not had to format once, i heard about the security greiffs etc, but cant say its affected me what so ever, I also heard about the issues with SP2 but installed that with no problems what so ever.

Xp finds devices, generally has most of the drivers required, and wasnt just a step up from ME or win2k, it was a huge huge leap.


Id consider a step up with your pc, i know its a money thing but i really think there is no issues that the standard user has with xp, as long as firewalls, antivirus are running.

Just to add, when xp first came out i was a bit weary of the tellytubby look etc, but now i just love xp. Even my wife who is completely non computer literate, has no issues with installing, cd/dvd writing, music to cds everthing.

[Davey]

I bought my computer a few years ago and being computer illiterate made the fatal mistake of putting off saving my images to CD. My son managed to download a virus off the net and the comp crashed! I lost everything! Now I have a laptop which can do everything my PC can but I dont connect it to the net. I save my images onto memory sticks that plug into any usb, so far so good....

[Alan Fairhurst]

Thanks a million for all the advice. I'll give consideration to each one. At least, I don't feel so lost now

[Eastern_herp]

Large hard drives are relatively cheap now and take up a lot less space than the equivalent storage space in DVD's. I use a firewire drive to back up my computer and every three months I burn the pictures to Taiyo Yuden DVD's and then delete the pictures from the hard drive after a year.
I am now thinking of getting 4 hard drives to store the photo's. @ for the photo's and 2 as duplicates. When one drive fails the backup would be used and then replace the broken one.

[Alan Fairhurst]

Hi Tony. I want to thank you a million times for the link to Cardrecovery. I've managed to recover every image from my camera memory card. I can't thank you enough.