backup plan

Images.

I spent part of the afternoon backing up images. Folder after folder burned to cd. An hour or so of my time was taken in the process.

I've been lucky so far with the computer. Although it may behave oddly by times I have never lost data to it. An article I read today in Photolife magazine (a fine Canadian publication) mentions two types of computer owners, those who have lost data and those who eventually will lose data. I would prefer to have something to recover.

Software for organizing my images would be handy. This comes to mind as I filter through folders to see what to burn with what. I can't keep track of all my images. Windows explorer has little to offer in the way of helping me organize my images. There must be something available for cataloguing, archiving and backing up my images. There must be an easier way to manage my files. It would be nice to know next time I do a backup what files haven't been touched since the last backup. Why back up everything, everytime?

In OS X for macintosh computers folders can be colour coded. I used to colour code my copy at school. Red labels were works in progress, badly needing work; green labels were works ready for submission; if the label had no colour, the folder contents usually weren't of pressing need. I wish I could do the same with windows, even if only to keep track of age and relevance.

We have an extra hard drive to use. I keep mentioning starting over with the computer. Reformat the hard drive, or switch to the 80 gig drive, or use both, reload windows with the update, reload our software and reload our data. The idea in the end would be to have a system set up that works and an extra external hard drive to do our backing up on. As it stands now, we can't get the computer to recognize that the external hard drive is hooked up. I have the same problem with my camera, the computer doesn't see it. Starting from scratch, though a drastic measure, seems the appropriate step to take.

Burning CDs is an economical way to backup information, but it isn't particularly sensitive to the environment, considering the CDs will eventually get tossed. And there is the process of burning CDs which is slow, tedious work. Having a hard drive to copy to makes a load of sense. Once a week.

It might even make sense to eventually get a seperate internal hard drive to keep my images on.