Ok! need some technical help

[bersaguy]

Ok, I will be the first to admit I am a computer dummy on many issues and this is one of them. I have a ton of pictures of Kasey stored here on this computer and my back up computer setting over in the corner. I have no clue in how to protect them in the event of a computer crash. I have had several people tell me to just put them on a flash drive. Is that what most folks would recomend. Thing is all of the pictures are mixed in with other pictures. Is there any way to just put all of Kaseys pictures in one location so I can download them onto a flash drive without all the other pictures or is it best to just save all of them together on it. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. 

Thanks Bersaguy      aka   Doug

[Sam1]

The question you need to ask is - are you willing to pay for an online backup service?  Or, how much data are you talking about?  You may be able to use a free service.

Remember, if you keep everything on a flash drive and there is a fire or some other disaster at your house, you're still likely to lose those pictures/data stored on the flash drive as well.

[Photoguy67]

My personal opinion is how much space are they using? That would dictate if I would use a flash drive, external drive or online backup. As far as just the pictures of Kasey, that would depend on a lot of factors such as are you using lightroom? I doubt you are or you would probably know how to segregate them. So unless you have a utility that can separate them, you are stuck saving them all or the tedious task of saving them one at a time or control-right click them. Hope this helps. Would be more than happy to help in anyway I can.

[Omega]

You can open two file explorer windows, one with the flashdrive and the other with the source of the pictures.  Drag over the pictures you want on the flashdrive and your good. 

Off site storage of data you want to protect can get expensive, especially if you never have need to retrieve it.  If it all fits on an external flashdrive, or an external hard drive for that matter, just store that at your relatives place.  If you ever need it, it's there, if not it's not wasted money.  If you are more creative, you can store data offline on the free services, just split it up between the various services, using one for family photos, one for equipment photos, one for misc photos etc.  If you keep personal data offline be sure to encrypt it, because you never know who will gain access.

[Johnny Rotten]

external hard drive

[Ronald_55]

A flash drive or external hard drive is a good idea, but again you have to store it "off-site" yourself. it is possible a flash drive could not have enough space if you have a huge amount.  Backblaze is a service that will back up one computer for $50 a year. It gives you unlimited storage online too. I think you simply install some software and tell it what to backup. One thing it will not do is let you back up a flash or external drive. That was so people could not back up several computers under one plan.

Backblaze Personal Backup

 

[gregintenn]

How many pictures are we talking, Doug?

[Sam1]

29 minutes ago, gregintenn said:

How many pictures are we talking, Doug?

That's the million dollar question

[btq96r]

I have to think just dragging and dropping the Kasey Pics folder onto Google Drive or something else similar is the simplest solution.

[jpx2rk]

Not a computer expert by any means, but if you create a "folder" in the pictures portion on your computer, and then move/copy/xfer all of the pics you want to backup into that particular folder, then just export that folder to a jump/thumb drive, or maybe a SD card.  Most packages on the thumbdrive/sd card indicate how many pictures or songs or whatever data it will hold.  I realize photobucket messed alot of people over for 3rd party sharing, but I assume you can still use PB for safe storage purposes.

[DaveTN]

Doug if all you want to do is backup some pictures as cheap as possible; I would bet a 64GB USB drive would do the trick.

Office Depot or Walmart… here are a couple around $20.

https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/562566/Lexar-JumpDrive-S75-USB-30-Flash/

https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/211809/PNY-USB-20-Flash-Drive-64GB/

 

If you want to spend $110 you can image your entire computer. Then if you have a hard drive crash, you simply replace the hard drive and restore from the image. No reloading of Windows and all your programs; it’s more expensive but it’s a total backup and a pretty simple restore in the case of a disaster.

$50 for Acronis software, $60 for a 1TB external hard drive. It can be set-up to backup daily, weekly; whatever you want.

There is free backup software; but its reliability is questionable. Acronis is a proven performer.

https://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/buy-backup/

https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/754055/WD-My-Passport-Portable-External-Hard/

 

Just remember backup is also about redundancy. Hard drives fail; all types all price ranges.

Everyone learns about backups. Some after a disaster they can’t recover from, some before. 

 

[bersaguy]

1 hour ago, DaveTN said:

Doug if all you want to do is backup some pictures as cheap as possible; I would bet a 64GB USB drive would do the trick.

Office Depot or Walmart… here are a couple around $20.

https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/562566/Lexar-JumpDrive-S75-USB-30-Flash/

https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/211809/PNY-USB-20-Flash-Drive-64GB/

 

If you want to spend $110 you can image your entire computer. Then if you have a hard drive crash, you simply replace the hard drive and restore from the image. No reloading of Windows and all your programs; it’s more expensive but it’s a total backup and a pretty simple restore in the case of a disaster.

$50 for Acronis software, $60 for a 1TB external hard drive. It can be set-up to backup daily, weekly; whatever you want.

There is free backup software; but its reliability is questionable. Acronis is a proven performer.

https://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/buy-backup/

https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/754055/WD-My-Passport-Portable-External-Hard/

 

Just remember backup is also about redundancy. Hard drives fail; all types all price ranges.

Everyone learns about backups. Some after a disaster they can’t recover from, some before. 

 

Yea Dave, I am going with the thumb flash drives which I am only going to be saving about 125 pictures and the thumb drives I looked at say they will safely hold over 500 pictures each. Since I have the pictures scattered all therough my documents and pictures files. I spoke with my son in law and I am going to email all the pictures to him. He will put all of them in one folder on his computer and once he has all of them he is going to down load them onto 3 different Flash drives so they can be safely kept in 3 diferent locations plus he will have all of them on his computer along with me having them on mine. We both have fireproof gun safes which is where I will put my flashdrive.

[Sam1]

Oh, if you only have a few hundred pictures, you can store them online for free.  I wouldn't even worry about using a flash drive.  most people have thousands upon thousands, and that's where a cost for online storage would come in.  You wouldn't even be close to filling up the amount of space on a free account with Google Drive.  Plus, you would be able to access them wherever you were that has internet access, instead of having to depend on physically having access to the flash drive.

https://www.google.com/drive/

Check out that site - you'll need to create an account, but after that is done, saving the photos is similar to the way you would do with a flash drive (except they're stored offsite)

Edited October 15, 2017 by Sam1

[DaveTN]

At one time you had to be a paid member to maintain original quality of photos on Google Drive. Has that changed?

[bersaguy]

16 minutes ago, Sam1 said:

Oh, if you only have a few hundred pictures, you can store them online for free.  I wouldn't even worry about using a flash drive.  most people have thousands upon thousands, and that's where a cost for online storage would come in.  You wouldn't even be close to filling up the amount of space on a free account with Google Drive.  Plus, you would be able to access them wherever you were that has internet access, instead of having to depend on physically having access to the flash drive.

https://www.google.com/drive/

Check out that site - you'll need to create an account, but after that is done, saving the photos is similar to the way you would do with a flash drive (except they're stored offsite)

In all honesty Sam I trust a flash drive more than I trust Google these days with everythng going on with them. At least with a flash drive I have them in my possession and full control of them. I do have several hundred fishing pictures I am also going to save but getting Kaseys pictures save now is priority one with me.

[Sam1]

understand!

[ReeferMac]

Ditto your google comments, however frankly I don't think they're that interested in your daughter, no matter how cute she is!

 

As a 20-year IT veteran, we had a saying - There are 2 kinds of people: those that perform backups, and those that have never had a Hard Drive crash.

As mentioned earlier, you will need to store said thumb-drive off-site. A fire-proof safe will likely not protect a flash-drive. In fact, taking  it a step further, I would recommend a back-up of the back-up (2 is 1, 1 is none). Get 2 of those flash drives, store one at your work, one at your wife's.

 

- K

[jgradyc]

bersaguy, my phone automatically uploads my pictures to Dropbox so I never have to worry about backing up photos. Dropbox also syncs my photos with my laptop. I start a new backup file every year to free up space on my my phone. I currently have 1,300 photos in my 2017 photo folder that is taking up 11 GB of space... and that includes maybe 1 GB of videos. 

You should be able to get several thousand photos on a 64GB USB flash drive, so that's probably the best and easiest approach for a one-time backup.

I pay $99/year for 1 Terabyte (1,000 GB) of Dropbox storage that backs up my photos, my laptop, and my wife's laptop. Equally important, it does it AUTOMATICALLY. I can literally hit save on a document and hear a ding when that document syncs to my wife's laptop about 5 seconds later. When my wife saves a file, I can hear a ding on my laptop five seconds later. So we have dual backup. In the cloud and on each other's laptop.

Just to be clear... you don't need this level of backup or this many GB of storage. I'm just letting everyone know how easy and relatively inexpensive it is to back up files today using Dropbox.

Edited October 16, 2017 by jgradyc

[TripleGGG]

3 minutes ago, jgradyc said:

bersaguy, my phone automatically uploads my pictures to Dropbox so I never have to worry about backing up photos. Dropbox also syncs my photos with my laptop. I start a new backup file every year to free up space on my my phone. I currently have 1,300 photos in my 2017 photo folder that is taking up 11 GB of space... and that includes maybe 1 GB of videos. 

You should be able to get several thousand photos on a 64GB USB flash drive, so that's probably the best and easiest approach for a one-time backup.

I pay $99/year for 1 Terabyte (1,000 GB) of Dropbox storage that backs up my photos, my laptop, and my wife's laptop. Equally important, it does it AUTOMATICALLY. I can literally hit save on a document and hear a ding when that document syncs to my wife's laptop about 5 seconds later. 

Just to be clear... you don't need this level of backup or this many GB of storage. I'm just letting everyone know how easy and relatively inexpensive it is to back up files today using Dropbox.

X2 for Dropbox. I use Dropbox for business. Not cheap but everything is automatic, and if you knew the technical skills of the ladies in my office you would realize how critical the necessity of easy and automatic. Plus we all have access to all files from any device. 

Do what is simple for you bersaguy. Sounds like you have a plan and that is what is important. 

[Dane]

I second Google drive.  I have used it for years and it is convenient and reliable.  

[btq96r]

10 hours ago, bersaguy said:

In all honesty Sam I trust a flash drive more than I trust Google these days with everythng going on with them. At least with a flash drive I have them in my possession and full control of them. I do have several hundred fishing pictures I am also going to save but getting Kaseys pictures save now is priority one with me.

I think that is mostly due with your not having much experience with it.  The flash drive is handy, but it can get lost, broken, anything else something that small is susceptible to.  With an online storage drive, you really nix all the "what if" possibilities.

[ReeferMac]

I think the big concern for a lot of people with online storage is counter-party risk. If it's not in your control, do you really have ownership of it?

[Tobashadow]

If the pictures are not sensitive aka would you freak out if a stranger seen them, then why not do what I do?

Ours are on a second drive, and three different free online storage places.

Google Drive

Dropbox

Amazon Photos