Please help computer illiterate!

Ok, I am new to photography. I got my first "real" camera, the 20D, about 4 months ago when I realized my daughter was 5 months old and I decided that I wanted to take quality pics of her as she grows up. I have always used a Kodak point and shoot and stored my photos on the Kodak program that came with the camera several years ago. I recently decided that I wanted to store these pics on an external hard drive and use a better program to manage/pp these files.
The other day I bought a Western Digital 250gb external drive that came with Picasa 2. I installed everything but am very confused and looking to see what you think is the best way to do things. Again, I understand the basics of computers but this is all very new to me. Here are the things that have me confused:

1. Does the external hard drive replace the storage of files on the C drive, or just back it up?
2. Is it best to actually use picasa as the photo management system to store the files in, or just store the files in a regular folder and only pull them to picasa to do any processing?
3. Do you keep the management program (picasa, kodak, etc) on the external drive or C drive?

I guess I am really confused on whether I should be "working out of" the extenal drive or strictly use it as a backup that I never really go into much, just back up files to it.

Here is another thing that has me confused. The way I am set up now is: I installed Picasa directly to the external drive. Say I pull a file from the C drive over to Picasa and save it to the external. I then delete the file from the C drive and then delete it from the recycle bin. It automatically deletes it from Picasa on the external. Do I have to have it saved to the C drive to have it saved to the K drive. Can I not save it to the external and delete it from the C drive and still have it on the external?

I know, a lot of questions, but I am really confused. PLease help me understand...

Thanks in advance, andy

1. The external hard drive is in addition to your C:\ drive. When you have it plugged in and turned on, it'll appear as a new drive letter in Windows Explorer.

2. Read the documentation about Picasa (I'm not familiar with the product) and see if you understand it enough to know how the program can help you. If you can't see any beneift in using it, then don't. Storing photos in an organized folder structure on my external hard drive works fine for me.

3. If you do install Picasa, it'll go onto your C drive, but the photos themselves can live on your external hard drive.

Hope that's in some way clear for you.

1; your external drive is a storage unit. you can back up files and just store files safely in it.
2; i never used picasa or any program to manage my picures, i just store all my files on the external drive, and open them when i need them.
3; you should run programs from drive c. to prevent damageing files on you external.
4; you should download you files directly to the external instead of c drive, and just leave them there till you need to work on one. so it will never be lost till you delete them.
5; store all your pictures on the external drive, because if your pc ever die on you, you won't loose any of your files on the external, but every thing on your c drive will be gone forever...

Ah yes....The never ending work flow question.
I have a very similar setup to yourself. The software you use is not as important as the procedure you develop.
One thing to consider NOW is what happens as your photo interests expand.

My basic work flow is to setup folders as to general subject: i.e Baby, Pets, Home, Landscapes etc.

Inside those, I create folders by Date. This is because there is generally one major event on a given date. (Baby's first steps).
If there are 2 or more events, you will have a date folder in each of the main folders, as above.

I rename all photos taken, as soon as they are downloaded to the computer. If you think about it, The "_mg_xxxx, or _IMG_xxx" doesn't tell you a thing, But "Feb 23-001" does.

I do all my post production on the "C" drive cause thats where your programs originate. I back up (immediately) to my external drive (using the same folder/file naming).

After I am sure that my work is done on a given project, I burn the data to a DVD. This way you are covered for any unforeseeable "accidents". I delete folders from the External HD as I need more room.

I use ACDSee (7.0) for review, renaming and most of my file handling chores. You can rename and resize (if needed) large quantities in a very short time.

I use a free software program for backing up, go to 'Karens Power tools' her Replicator software is great.

Good Luck and welcome to the forum. Oh, you might fill out more of your profile as many questions are Country specific and native language is not always English.

DozerLYP wrote in post #2790030
5; store all your pictures on the external drive, because if your pc ever die on you, you won't loose any of your files on the external, but every thing on your c drive will be gone forever...

Don't tell him that. If his mother board dies he may throw out the PC and lose everything for no reason.

If something were to happen to your computer and not to the hard drive, your hard drive can be removed and used with another computer to recover all the data or used as another hard drive.

Also, if you have a dvd burner and dvd's burn everything to disk. It may be a pain in the ass, but if you want to be 99% sure that you will have backups, use a dvd. The external hard drive can go from normal use. It's not something that should happen right away, but occasionally there are bad drives like there are occaisonally bad autos or bad appliances...it's a fact of life. DVD's are going to be almost infinitely less prone from data loss due to use because

a) you'll be using them as a backup and not a primary way of accessing those pictures

and

b) they have no moving parts that wear out or go bad so their failure rate is a lot lower than a hard drive.

Any more questions? Post them up and some one will help.

edit: By the way, Western Digital is a very good brand as far as hard drives go, so unless by some chance you have a fluke, that drive should last you for a very long time...just make sure you stay as for away from the Maxtor brand as possible. They are extremely unreliable.

DozerLYP wrote in post #2790030
1; your external drive is a storage unit. you can back up files and just store files safely in it... 5; store all your pictures on the external drive, because if your pc ever die on you, you won't loose any of your files on the external, but every thing on your c drive will be gone forever...

I know you didn't intentionally mislead, but just for clarification, I would point out a few things:

1) No storage medium is foolproof (CF card, hard drives, DVDs, etc.). This is why you should always backup important data early and often. Mission-critical files should be copied onto two separate physical media (separate hard drives, DVD or internet-based backup service) before deleting them from your camera memory cards.

2) Internal hard drives are no more prone to failure than external drives.

3) If something in the computer other than a hard drive fails (processor, RAM, etc.), you can always move the C drive or any other hard drive to another computer. It's just easier to do that with an external drive.

i haven't worked with picasa, but it seems like your "delete issue" could be a setup problem in picasa.

RE your external drive, i personally would use it as a backup medium. and THEN you backup your external drive onto DVDs! curtis is absolutely right, every kind of medium could go south! but external drives are exposed to more stress b/c they are being transported compared to internal drives in desktops.

my advice: work off your internal drive. it's faster than any USB or firewire anyway (unless you have eSATA). you turn on and use your external drive only to backup your originals and/or processed pictures for example by the end of the day. that would decrease wear and tear. BTW, desktop (not server) hard drives were designed and tested to be used in a regular 8-hour day. that's how they extrapolate the MTBF (mean time between failures). so turning off your drive is absolutely fine, as long as don't constantly use the on-off switch .

another piece of advice: partition your harddisk into C: (where windows resides) and D: (where your data is). from my experience, if you work extensively with windows, you'll find out one of these days how easily it could screw up your files . if you don't feel comfortable "partitioning" then forget my advice. it's actually pretty easy though with eg. PartitionMagic.

CKA

Thanks for all of the info guys! I think I have this thing figured out. For simplicitys sake, I uninstalled Picasa, and copied all of my picture files onto my K drive in a master folder. There are currently about 100 sub folders that I am working on organizing as we speak. Once I get that done all I will need is a PP program, which will not store my files and will live on my C drive, only being used when I want to edit a photo. Thanks again for all of your help. Please critique my photos (which will begin being posted within the next week or 2) in the Critique Corner... andy

remember, Picasa is mainly an organizing software with some adjustment tools built in... It's just a different way of organizing and viewing your images all in one place, while the actual files may be scattered in folders all over your hard drive.

I use the organizer in Elements, personally. (And probably will switch to Lightroom if I get that.) (Adobe also has a free version of their organizer Photoshop Album Starter Edition 3.0, I believe).

Some forego organizers, and feel they do better navigating their folders through windows

Strange how individual experience differs. I've used Maxtor drives, internal and external for the last 9 years on all my various computers. Never had a single malfunction.

I think CurtisN has pretty well summed it up. The whole idea is to spread data over a variety of sources, in this case redundancy is not a bad thing.