Photos back up

[Gunna]

I want to dump oversized & old folders of photos from my PC's hard drive onto an external hard drive.
To make the size choice easier, is there a way of getting Windows to show the size of each folder in the 'Details' list of the main 'My Pictures' folder?

[Gunna]

By the way - I have Windows 7/64.
I did some more research - the answer appears to be - it can't be done.
Win 7 dropped it as an option because it would take too long to calculate for each folder.
However, there is a quicker way of getting 'Options' up - on selected folder, click Alt + Enter.
Question - how can I get a screen print of the folders list, so I can write these size figures on it?

[davros]

the only way I know is to hit PRTSC (print screen). it puts a copy of your desktop in the clipboard. Open up photoshop or whatever you use to process your images. Create a new file and then hit CTRL+V to paste the clipboard into your new image file.

[ricktas]

What sort of backup plan do you have, in general?

You need to have copies of your photos stored in multiple backups to ensure you do not lose them. Just having the old ones on an external drive isn't sufficient. What if that external drive fails, is dropped, accidentally formatted, stolen? Then you lose every photo on it..permanently.

I think you need to consider a decent backup plan in general, rather than just looking at dumping your photos onto an external drive, in what appears to be just an attempt to free up space on your internal hard drive.

Can you afford to lose all your photos? With no chance of ever getting them back?

[camerasnoop]

You know that right-clicking on the folder in Windows Explorer will bring up a dialogue box that shows the size of the folder and the number of files in it, don't you?

[camerasnoop]

You should also explore the option available through the command "robocopy.exe". You run this via the Command Prompt. It allows you to copy (or move) files and file structures from one location to another. You can set criteria for age and file size using the /switches. It is very powerful and it is much quicker than using Explorer alone. Google "robocopy" as well. There are whole pages dedicated to explaining just what all the options mean.

You should follow Rick's suggestion and back all of them up anyway, but either way, robocopy will come in handy. For a backup of the whole shebang you use something like this:

robocopy c:\pictures z:\pictures /s /zb /r:0

This would copy all directories (that are not empty) and all files in those from the directory c:\pictures to a new location at z:\pictures. It would also work like a backup in that if it falls over halfway through, it will continue once it stops, and if it can't read any file, it will skip it and continue on. This is great for reading from CD/DVD where there has been a cyclical redundancy error, because it skips the ones it can't read and copies the ones it can read. It will report at the end on how many it copied and how many it skipped.

Now you can use switches that will only copy (or move) files that haven't been accessed for a period of time too. You can even set minimum and maximum file sizes.

This reply may not help you, but hopefully it will help some others reading it, so sorry if it is no help to you.

[camerasnoop]

For all of you who read this and are now trying to copy from your root directory, just be careful with how it treats some of your windows system directories. You'll need to do a little research on how it handles virtual directories created by Windows 7 and Vista. I recall having a problem with those, but unfortunately I can't remember the solution (getting too old I guess). This won't affect other directories though. It is particularly useful if you simply want to update changes made in one location across to a back-up location.

Switches are here:

http://www.online-it-support.co.uk/?p=1224

Syntax is here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee851678.aspx

[camerasnoop]

Okay, my final post on this - I promise! Robocopy is a powerful tool and so it can get you in a power of trouble if you get it wrong. You should probably run it as an Administrator. Be aware that if you have a dodgy source like a damaged DVD or CD, that the default value for retries is 1 million. Yes that's right, it will try to copy an unreadable file 1 million times before it moves on to the next. The default gap between tries is 30 seconds. So....if you use this to try to recover readable files from damaged CD/DVD media, then make sure you include the switches /r:0 and /w:0 unless you want to grow old waiting for it all to happen.

Omitting the /z switch will make your job run much quicker. Using the /L switch will actually run the job as a practice and not actually do it. Use this to see whether your command can be run.

Visit here http://everything.explained.at/Robocopy/ for a more comprehensive explanation.

Now I've gotta go earn some sheckles so I can get higher up on kiwi's poll for spending on camera gear.

[Bennymiata]

If you want to archive the photos, yet have them easily read, get a blu-ray burner for your PC.
I just got a Pioneer one for around $150.00 from my company's IT guy, as well as a spindle of 50 25Gig, ink-jet printable B-R disks for another $150 or so.
That's 1250 gig for $300, and the disks should last around 100 years.
They are very quick to read and write and this is probably the safest way to back-up your photos, videos etc.
I've had a number of hard drives die on me over the years, so everything is backed up on a disk of one sort or another.