Last year I stupidly left my laptop on a plane, and I never got it back. It had, like any computer would, tons of important documents and irreplaceable photos. I hadn’t backed up anything. I was so dumb. After that I swore I would back up EVERYTHING. And I did…at first. Then, in typical fashion, I got lazy about it and BAM: the desktop computer Mike and I share crashed. It’s the computer Mike writes on and I edit photos on. We both lost six months of work.
Yeah, I went out and bought an external hard drive the next day.
An external hard drive can be a great thing – IF you are organized. If you just throw documents and photos on it all willy-nilly, it starts to look like my garage and that doesn’t help ANYONE. I still have no idea where half my wardrobe is. Today I am going to give you tips on how to organize and archive your photos so they are safe AND still easily accessible.
One of the simplest ways to organize is to rename photos. I know it’s tempting to leave your photos named IMG1235.jpg, but unless you have a photographic memory it’s not exactly helpful. It will take a few extra minutes, but change those titles to something more descriptive, like “first birthday party” and then put a number after the name so it looks like this: “first_birthday_party_1.jpg.”
Adding descriptive tags to photos is another great way to make your images easily searchable. If I want to see photos of Annie, I would search the tag “Annabel” and every photo of her would come up – even the ones that might be named, say, first_birthday_party_1.jpg. If you have a Windows operating system, you can learn how to tag with Windows Live Photo Gallery here, and if you have a Mac you can get information on how to tag with keywords on iPhoto here.
My preferred method of organizing is by folders. I arrange my photos by date taken.
However, I posses a bit of a freak memory when it comes to the pictures I take. I can remember when I took almost any photo. I can’t remember basic math, but I can remember that the photo of Annie by the Santa Monica Pier was taken Memorial Day Weekend. That’s great – for ME. If Mike wants to find a particular photo, I have to help him. So if you’re going to organize by folders, using tags will help you narrow down your searches.
You can get more photo organizing tips here thanks to HP, my awesome photo partners.
Next week for Archiving 102 I will go over different external storage solutions – and I’ll be giving away a hard drive. WOOT WOOT!
melanie says:
You need Trend Micro’s Safe Sync. Everything you put on your computer, every document you write, every photo you edit, goes into a little cloud in the sky. Then when your computer crashes, you just bring it back on down from the cloud. No remembering to put things on the hard drive, no lost memories, and the security is the same your bank uses. You don’t have to send it, it grabs everything.
I know I sound like a commercial but it is the best thing evah.
Jan says:
Do you keep and organize all of your photos in iphoto or do you organize them in finder? Do you upload into iphoto and then export to finder? I’m new to Mac and haven’t figured out the best way to do things yet
Heather says:
I organize all my photos myself – I’ve been doing it that way since before I switched to a Mac so I never really bothered with iPhoto. But from what I hear, it’s very user-friendly!
Laura says:
I use a back-up system called SugarSync, which automatically backs up all your files and data… every time you edit or create a new file, it is automatically updated. And it works in the background so you don’t have to manually do anything. The best thing is that you can synchronize two or more computers, so the files on both will be the same, and you can access your files from any computer with Internet access.
I also sound like a commercial, but it saved my life when my hard drive crashed. External hard drives can sometimes be unpredictable …
Annie says:
I use a program called Carbonite and it’s amazing! There’s an annual subscription (like $50 ish) and it automatically backs up EVERYTHING on your computer. My laptop was stolen a few years ago and I lots tons and tons of stuff I hadn’t backed up. Right after that I got an external hard drive, but I’ve never been diligent about using it. Carbonite has been a great solution- I don’t have to think about it at all, and all my stuff is safe!
Mark Duddridge says:
I was going to suggest Carbonite. I have never used it myself, but hear it advertised on the radio.
Jen says:
I second Carbonite! I’ve been using it for a few years and it is wonderful. I also have an external hard drive, but I have a laptop so in order to do a backup, I have to remember to connect it, etc. Carbonite requires no thinking on my part at all- which is exactly what my poor brain needs. Backup backup backup! Twice it has saved me from catastrophic file loss (business-related too, so eeeek!)
Kathy says:
I had to laugh when you mentioned that you had to help Mike find pictures. I threw a surprise birthday party for my husband and wanted to make some photo collages. It took SO MUCH TiME figuring out his mac computer, trying to find where he stored our pictures, and looking through EVERY ONE to catch the good photos! And, of course, I had to do all of this in short bursts of time when he wasn’t home. So, if you ever want a photo surprise from Mike, you’d better keep your pictures organized well!
Kristin says:
Thank God for external hard drives. They have saved my life on more than one occasion.
val says:
External hard drives crash, too! Back up externals!! I learned this the hard and (EXTREMELY) expensive way. It cost me over $2k to recover data from an external that crashed. I back up to an external and to DVD. Yes, it can be time consuming, but at least it’s not going to cost me TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS.
Leslie says:
My external hard drive just CRASHED and we have been dealing with Mozy….it’s a nightmare!!!!! I’m still waiting for my pics of my little girl and SO distressed!!! Great article!
Ray says:
I think another important way to make sure that photos never get deleted is: By printing them up and putting them into photo albums. With this age of technology, photo albums are neglected.
I know it can be very EXPENSIVE and time consuming to print EVERY photo you have, since some people have thousands, but the most important ones should be in albums.
And if you do it on a regular basis (for future photos): It won’t be such a hassle.