Dear Guests,

I hope everyone got home safely. I am glad you are staying up-to-date with the Digital Workshop. Today, I want to share with you the importance of backing up your photos. I think we will all agree that the photos we capture on our vacations play a vital role in triggering fond memories. Therefore, it is important that we don’t lose these photos. The following few paragraphs will inform you of a few ways to ensure that your photos are properly backed up.

First, I want to stress the importance of transferring your photos from the camera to the computer whenever you get the chance. You never know what could happen to your card and it’s important to get those photos on the computer as soon as possible. If you need assistance transferring your photos from the camera to the computer check out this handout: Insert Photo Here.

Now eventually you are probably going to want to clear those photos from your memory card so that you have more free capacity and thus take new photos. But now your photos are only stored in one place: your computer’s hard drive. If something were to happen to your computer such as theft, or a spilt beverage, you may lose these precious memories forever. Therefore, you will need to backup or store these photos in a separate or additional manner. I really like to recommend three ways to backup your photos: via an external hard drive, on DVDs or CDs, and online via a Live Spaces page.

1) External Hard drive – This is kind of like the hard drive on your computer except that it’s externally located and connects to the computer via a USB port. This is a great option because external hard drives allow you to store a lot of photos easily in one place. I recommend purchasing a hard drive with a capacity of at least 250 GB. This will let you store approximately 125,000 photos. What is nice about the external hard drive is that you can synchronize it with your computer so that every time you upload new photos to your computer the information will be backed up on your external hard drive as well. I just recently bought a FreeAgent Go by Seagate and I am very happy with it. You can purchase an external hard drive from your local electronics store such as Best Buy or from a reputable online retailer such as NewEgg.com. I like NewEgg.com because you can read user reviews and see what everyday consumers think of the product you are purchasing. Furthermore, your external hard drive can be used to backup other documents as well such as Word Documents.

2) DVDs or CDs – Another easy way to backup your photos is to store your photos on DVDs or CDs. DVDs store more data than do CDs but cost slightly more so make your purchase decision depending on the price point. A typical DVD will generally store 2,000 photos while a CD is going to hold about 350 photos. Burning (or storing) your photos on a DVD or CD is very easy using the Windows Live Photo Gallery. Just simply follow these instructions:

a. Open the Windows Live Photo Gallery

b. Select the photos you want to burn by holding down the CTRL key and selecting the photos with the mouse. Use CTRL + A to “select all”.

c. Click on “Make” in the taskbar (a few over from File)

d. Choose either “Burn a DVD” or “Burn a data CD”

3) Storing your photos online via a Live Spaces Page – This is one more way to store your photos and also offers you the fun ability to share these photos with friends and family via online albums. Finally, I recommend storing your photos online because if your computer, external hard drive and CDs are all stored in the same house and catastrophe strikes, you may still be out of luck. This is a completely alternative way to store your photos because your photos will be stored on Microsoft’s server. Don’t worry about privacy because you can limit who has permission to view your photos online as well as Microsoft has taken precautions to make sure your precious memories are protected. If you would like to learn more about storing your photos online check out these handouts: A Space to Call My Own, Your Fifteen Minutes of Fame and Show and Tell.

Well, I hope you found this entry useful and take initiative to backup your photos. I think we can all agree that our photos are worth more than the $80 or so you will need to invest in an external hard drive and some DVDs or CDs. It may take some time to initially backup your photos the first time if you have not been doing so but as long as you backup after every vacation as you go, you will find it less burdensome.

Your Techspert from the ms Zuiderdam with the Holland America Line Digital Workshop powered by Windows,

Brent Benner