I think I'm slowing my computer down by storing too many photos. Does anybody have recommendations for the best way of keeping lots of photos off the hard-drive? I want easy access and safety so should I go for an on-line system (if so which is best)? Should I go with an external back up (I've got one and I do back up my photos but I don't delete them from my hard-drive and I worry that if I do there will be only one copy - also you have to remember which drive has your old pics on!)? How about a home server? I said that last bit as if I know what I'm talking about - don't be fooled!! Many thanks for any help/suggestions!!
Funnily enough Judith I have just spent the last 30 minutes deleting photos I have taken but not been happy with. It's surprising how they seem to clog up your hard drive & slow down your computer. I would really like a system that would be efficient too .
@happypat See that's my problem - rubbish at deleting things - and even when you do I'm not sure you get all the speed back - be interesting to find out if anybody has hot tips!
I have put mine on Snapfish for last 8 years and recently switched to Shutterfly. I also put on back up drive but cant delete from hard drive. I like the easy access. There must be a way?
Hi Judith - all my photos get loaded to my work laptop as that is with me wherever i go and all my editing packages are on it to...so I really notice it if I've got over a months worth of shots stored! I have 2 external harddrives (iomega ego) - both a terabyte and I back up both on a rotating basis. I carry one with me as it's A6 size) and leave the other at home (on the basis I'd be very unlucky to lose both at once!). I have been considering external hardrive space too - the thing to check out is how the provider backs up their servers and what the risks would be if they lost your work - also do they try and compress your files in upload which might lose the image quality on download (and the thing that's putting me off is the time to upload to that server to start with!!) I imagine a mix of on-line server and external harddrives is probably the way to go...i'm contemplating asking our work offline provider to do something for me as there is a huge minefield of providers out there!!
hi Judith, it is extremely unlikely all your photos are causing your system to slow down, system speed is determined by memory (RAM) and processor speed, neither of which have anything to do with your hard disk drive (where you store your photos) if you are using windows xp, it is very very common for this to happen as it's a rubbish operating system, your best bet is to get someone to backup all your data and reinstall your system fresh, it will speed it up significantly.
Hi Judith, Your hard drive would have to be very nearly full to affect the speed of the machine (depending on a few other factors). I'm assuming it's Windows and your pictures are kept somewhere below My Documents, so please can you tell us the size of your hard disk and the free space - just double-click on My Computer and the info is all there.
Personally, I back up to a USB portable drive (which means it gets its power from the USB port and doesn't have a seperate power supply), which is physically tiny yet holds one terabyte (one thousand megabytes) of data. Here is a UK link:
I do a few things. All my favourite photos are uploaded to flickr but every single photo I have is now saved to an external hardrive. Our computer was acting sluggish and when hubby looked at the size of my photos folder it was over 100GB. We spent a couple days sorting through them and slowly and carefully putting them on the external and deleting them from the main computer. After it was all done we noticed a huge improvement on the working of our computer. We bought I think a 2 tetrabyte hardrive from Play.com and it was a great bargain, if you look around there are always bargains to find on them. Also I know it's a scary thing the whole deleting from the computer but if you're careful you do have them backed up. :D
If you want external storage with built-in backup, look at a NAS system, or a Drobo. I use the Drobo S and have found it to be excellent, with dual-drive redundancy. That said, I don't rely solely on the Drobo - I use standard external drives as backups for the Drobo. http://www.drobo.com/products/
@Scrivna Thanks Ross - it's Windows Vista but sounds like it's time for an overhaul! @foolmoon Hard disk is 455GB, 232GB free, 85GB of photos. Sounds like you are agreeing with Ross here and it may not solve my problem.
@sparkle@jennylynb@coolgirlsar@jinximages Thanks very much for your suggestions - I'll have a look at those systems. I've got a Seagate backup but it's pretty heavy and definitely 'desktop'- sounds like I need an extra back up and then I need to be brave and hit delete!! AND get a system overhaul! @jannkc@coolgirlsar Thanks for the info on on-line storage - I've been surprised how few people have mentioned it as a general place for back-up of pics - I'll have a look at the sites you mention.
Personally I wouldn't trust all my photos to a 3rd party company to look after like flickr, snapfish or even 365 project, companies go bust and the last thing you want is to lose your photos, it's not worth the risk, ALWAYS store you photos yourself and back them up, preferably in a few places so you have redundancy.
@judithg WE just had a computer chappie in , looking at variuos issues , and he said he would NEVER use inline storage for photos, Too risky and teh privacy issie is delicate.. small print sometimes gives them rights you'd rather hey didn't have.
Am in eth same boat of trying to move photos to an external AND external back-up.
@Scrivna@june And I suppose they can just dump your photos if you're not paying for the storage - hard-drives in my own sweaty hands it is then. Do Macs behave better over time than PCs?
@judithg Yes , i have read that in PHoto magazines ... how long will they store your thtongs if you stop buying stuff from teh,? incidentally , thanks fro deciphering my rotten typing ..
I've always have made it a practice, when setting up a computer, to always separate my Operating System storage from my media/data storage, which I configure in a RAID 1 (Mirrored). This is just a techy term that means two hard drives that are exactly the same like a mirror image. So, if one drive has a mechanical issue, you still have a working copy on the second drive.
Many new PCs support RAID 1, so all you have to do is buy two hard drives that are the same size. This is a bit more affordable than a business grade NAS device that Jinx mentioned and the Home NAS storage systems are still very buggy and usually involves some proprietary system of storing files that limits your recovery options.
In addition to this, I use a external portable drive for additional backup off site. Portable drives are simple solutions to copy off data and move data around, but I would be a bit hesitent to use them exclusively for backup. Since they are very portable, they are also very dropable.
My preference is a belt and braces one - I have an external hard drive which I back everything on to (though not as often as I should - can't think where it is at the moment - under a pile of books in the spare room probably) - but I also upload all my albums (once I've ruthlessly weeded out the rubbish photos) to Smugmug. It's a paid for site but I've been impressed so far - easy to use, good resolution if you want to show pics to people (I found Shutterfly seemed to compress the resolution somewhat - or whatever - they just didn't look as good). More importantly, on two occasions, I've somehow lost albums from my PC (goodness knows how) and the process to download the albums from Smugmug was really efficient - they sent me me an email with my pics attached so I could restore them to my PC. I think you can try them for a trial period.
@dddave0@islawight Thank you both for this - it sounds like Smugmug is a useful extra for 'best shots'. I'm going to 'get a man in ' to sort me out I think!
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Personally, I back up to a USB portable drive (which means it gets its power from the USB port and doesn't have a seperate power supply), which is physically tiny yet holds one terabyte (one thousand megabytes) of data. Here is a UK link:
http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.209-8678.aspx
http://www.drobo.com/products/
@foolmoon Hard disk is 455GB, 232GB free, 85GB of photos. Sounds like you are agreeing with Ross here and it may not solve my problem.
@jannkc @coolgirlsar Thanks for the info on on-line storage - I've been surprised how few people have mentioned it as a general place for back-up of pics - I'll have a look at the sites you mention.
Am in eth same boat of trying to move photos to an external AND external back-up.
Scrammles your brains a treat.
Many new PCs support RAID 1, so all you have to do is buy two hard drives that are the same size. This is a bit more affordable than a business grade NAS device that Jinx mentioned and the Home NAS storage systems are still very buggy and usually involves some proprietary system of storing files that limits your recovery options.
In addition to this, I use a external portable drive for additional backup off site. Portable drives are simple solutions to copy off data and move data around, but I would be a bit hesitent to use them exclusively for backup. Since they are very portable, they are also very dropable.