How many photos on a DVD and is it a best way to go?

[scottie]

I was noticing we had approx 12000 pics (and growing) on our computer and figured might be nice to get them off the hard drive and onto dvds instead. I do not currently have a dvd burner in our 7 year old Dell desktop but wouldn’t be opposed to adding one, just not sure which would be compatible. Is this a good option to store our pictures on DVDs instead of the hard drive? How many pictures should I expect to fit on a DVD? I believe most photos were taken on the highest setting on cameras that ranged from 3-6 megapixel.

[RBennett]

I was noticing we had approx 12000 pics (and growing) on our computer and figured might be nice to get them off the hard drive and onto dvds instead. I do not currently have a dvd burner in our 7 year old Dell desktop but wouldn’t be opposed to adding one, just not sure which would be compatible. Is this a good option to store our pictures on DVDs instead of the hard drive? How many pictures should I expect to fit on a DVD? I believe most photos were taken on the highest setting on cameras that ranged from 3-6 megapixel.

I actually had the exact same dilemma today. My computer is about to crash because I have so little memory due to my pictures and what I did was went out and bought an external dvd-drive. It can record onto 4.7Gb discs, so you can do the math there (4.7Gb/6Mb) and find out how many pictures will fit on there. This way, I can just plug it up into my USB 2.0 port and that's all the installation I need. I'll let you know how it turns out! :thumbsup2

[scottie]

I actually had the exact same dilemma today. My computer is about to crash because I have so little memory due to my pictures and what I did was went out and bought an external dvd-drive. It can record onto 4.7Gb discs, so you can do the math there (4.7Gb/6Mb) and find out how many pictures will fit on there. This way, I can just plug it up into my USB 2.0 port and that's all the installation I need. I'll let you know how it turns out! :thumbsup2

Yes, please let me know how it goes!!

[mabas9395]

Most people will advise you that having your pictures in only one location is not a very secure way to go. Whether it is on your hard drive or on DVD, every single type of media will crash/fail at some point. Its not a matter of IF, just a matter of WHEN.

At the minimum, you should probably get both a DVD burner and another hard drive. Make a copy of all your photos on two sets of DVDs. Keep one at the house and another away from home (I keep mine in a drawer at work) in case of fire/flood/etc to your house. Then move the files off your main C drive and put them on the extra hard drive.

Other people can offer more advanced backup techniques, but the above is my opinion of the bare minimum that people should do for photo backups.

[MICKEY88]

if buying a dvd burner I'd buy a dual layer burner, dual layer disks hold 8 gig of data rather than 4.7

[handicap18]

I would find some way to get your pictures backed up if not by yesturday, then at least by 2 days ago!!

You can go several routes. Add a USB 2.0 card to your computer if you haven't already or if the computer doesn't have one. Being that old you might only have a USB 1.1

With a USB 2.0 you get a MUCH MUCH MUCH faster transfer and also get extra power to power what ever you plug into it.

WIth this you can get an external hard drive as additional storage and you can also get an external DVD burner.

I would say get both. Keep the pictures on your hard drive, then also have them on the external hard drive and keep copies in a safe or a saftey deposit box on DVDs. The last thing you want to have happen your computers hard drive to crash and lose all your pictures. Its not a fun experience. I've been there. There are ways for computer experts to retreive your files from a dead HD, but it is expensive and they may not be able to retreive everything.

[JR6ooo4]

But it has been mentioned here before...

the more data you pack on a DVD the more will be lost when that DVD is damaged or lost, compared to a cd.

But it is very convenient to burn 4 DVDs instead of 16 or more CDs.

Mikeeee

[scottie]

If I remove the pictures off my hard drive and move them to DVDs, what is the best program to use to view the photos again? I currently have them all saved the hard drive and view them in Kodak Gallery program on my computer. The Gallery program allows me to view them in different groups such as vacations etc and sort. I would like to be able to pop in the disc and still view photos based on sorted categories such as vacations, sports, etc. but maybe with a different program?

[Donold_Fan]

what is the best program to use to view the photos again?


I personally use Picasa, which is free from Google. It let's you tag photo's, organize them by subject/date/etc. There may be better tools, but I really like Picasa. I will caveat that by saying that although it does have some photo editting abilities, I don't use it for editting, only for browsing. It also does archiving to DVD/CD.

Take a look at least, the price is right. Just go to Google and search for picasa. I'm interested to see what other's recommend.

[MarkBarbieri]

Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/) is another popular photo viewer.

[Khokhonutt]

I use SmugMug (http://www.smugmug.com/) as both a backup and as a way to share photos. The price I pay for a yearly fee more than compensates for the price of extra hardware. One of the things that drew me to them is the fact that they tout themselves as a backup solution, replicating your photos on servers located in different locations in the country. If the worst case happens and you lose every machine/disk in your house, you can order your original photos on DVDs from Smugmug.

That said, I prefer a couple of USB harddrives to the DVD or CD solution. I've had far too many home burned discs that eventually become unreadable over time to trust them with data I really want to keep. Harddrive space is cheap these days, so you could maintain one to use on a daily basis and another as a backup. Swapping them out would make sure things are usable. Taking one to work with you (and swapping them out on a regular basis) gives you an off site backup.

Finally, with any backup solution, make sure you test your backups regularly. If you burn/copy or whatever and forget, then go back later to find out that backup is no good, you're out of luck.

[Groucho]

Irfanview actually has a feature to make a DVD (or CD) slideshow automatically when you put it in a PC, but I haven't played with that.

Re: dual layer. I think you'd have a very hard time finding a burner that won't do dual layer at this point. But I wouldn't recommend dual layer blanks just because they're at least 5x the cost for less than 2x the storage. (about 8.5 vs 4.7.)

Re: DVD vs hard drive - no question, DVD. Hard drives are far less reliable. Plus there's the whole "eggs in one basket thing" - if your hard drive fails completely, you lose all your backups. And chances are that because you're only using it for backups, you won't notice if it's getting bad sectors before it fails completely.

Re: storage. A single-layer DVD actually holds more like 4.35 gigs than 4.7. One of those "different ways of counting" things you hear about. ;)

Re: viewing from CD/DVD. It's really not convenient to view from disc, first off it's slow (especially if you look at one picture long enough for the disc to spin down, then you have to wait for it to spin up again) and there's little organization. I would treat CDs/DVDs as backups and view from the PC. The exception would be making a disc to view on a DVD player that can view JPGs, in which case you'll want to organize your photos in folders.

Re: age... if your PC and hard drive are seven years old, you are definitely on borrowed time! You need to back your stuff up immediately! Yesterday even! :)

If you are even somewhat competent with a screwdriver, you can replace your existing CD/DVD drive with a DVD burner yourself. A quality DVD burner costs all of $30 or so from NewEgg. If you want an external, it will be slightly more - and again, make sure you have USB2. A USB2 add-in card is cheap, like probably $10-15.

[Jeanne B]

This subject would be nice to have as a sticky.::yes::

[Quicklabs]

So can all pictures be transferred automatically to a DVD or do I have to use a program like Nero and make a slide show. That would take forever, since I have over 15000 pictures on my hard drive right now)

[manning]

Most people will advise you that having your pictures in only one location is not a very secure way to go. Whether it is on your hard drive or on DVD, every single type of media will crash/fail at some point. Its not a matter of IF, just a matter of WHEN.

At the minimum, you should probably get both a DVD burner and another hard drive. Make a copy of all your photos on two sets of DVDs. Keep one at the house and another away from home (I keep mine in a drawer at work) in case of fire/flood/etc to your house. Then move the files off your main C drive and put them on the extra hard drive.

Other people can offer more advanced backup techniques, but the above is my opinion of the bare minimum that people should do for photo backups.


I can second that. Just had a external hard drive go south a couple of weeks ago. Luckily I had backups.

[MICKEY88]

Re: dual layer. I think you'd have a very hard time finding a burner that won't do dual layer at this point. But I wouldn't recommend dual layer blanks just because they're at least 5x the cost for less than 2x the storage. (about 8.5 vs 4.7.)

.

realistically you should only use gold disks for backing up your photos if you want long term reliability, and they are more expensive than dual layer disks..

[scottie]

How do I figure out what DVD burner I can install in my Dell Desktop, in place of the old cd burner or dvd player in the tower now?

[MarkBarbieri]

How do I figure out what DVD burner I can install in my Dell Desktop, in place of the old cd burner or dvd player in the tower now?

I believe that there are only two types (excluding notebook styles). One connects with an SATA connector and the other connects with a PATA connector. Given that you have an "old cd burner", it is very likely to use a PATA (IDE) style connector.

An easier option is to just by an external USB 2.0 drive (assuming that your desktop supports USB 2.0.

realistically you should only use gold disks for backing up your photos if you want long term reliability, and they are more expensive than dual layer disks..

I don't believe that gold disks are necessary. Aluminum and silver based disks are only a concern if they oxidize. Assuming that the disk is well sealed, that shouldn't be a problem. Here (http://adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2006/10/30/how-to-choose-cddvd-archival-media) is an article on the subject of archival storage using DVDs.

[Alztybrn]

Does anybody utilize Flash Drives as part of their backup plan?

[MarkBarbieri]

Does anybody utilize Flash Drives as part of their backup plan?

I use them for in-camera backups. I'm not sure that I would trust them for long-term storage. That's not a typical use, so I don't know if they are designed with that in mind. I have talked to a pro portrait photographer that buys 4 gig CF cards in bulk, shoots JPG, and treats the cards like negatives. It works for him, but I wouldn't do it.

[Groucho]

realistically you should only use gold disks for backing up your photos if you want long term reliability, and they are more expensive than dual layer disks..
So which is it - gold single-layer discs or dual-layer discs? :confused3

Seriously, though, I agree with Mark. I've been burning CDs for well over 10 years and the vast majority are still just fine. I recently completed moving the contents of about 150+ CDs to DVD, and have been continuing to move other data off CDs - probably read maybe 300-400+ recently and probably had less than five bad ones. Of those, maybe 1-2 were due to the CD deteriorating, rather than scratches or whatnot.

I'm continuing to move everything from CD to DVD (the only thing left will be MP3 CDs to listen to in the car), and I have no doubt that in a couple years, I'll be moving everything to BluRay discs. Basically, my discs just need to last long enough until the next generation of discs comes along. :teeth:

[scottie]

-If I go with an external hard drive to move all the pics off our main hard drive and store them on the external instead, should I still have the same speed of viewing for the photos? Also, would I just be able to drag and drop the photo folders onto the external drive?

-What is the best deal these days on an external dvd burner that I shouldnt expect to have issues with and has a great price?

By the way, I did add a USB 2.0/firewire card to the computer a few months back.

[RBennett]

-If I go with an external hard drive to move all the pics off our main hard drive and store them on the external instead, should I still have the same speed of viewing for the photos? Also, would I just be able to drag and drop the photo folders onto the external drive?

-What is the best deal these days on an external dvd burner that I shouldnt expect to have issues with and has a great price?

By the way, I did add a USB 2.0/firewire card to the computer a few months back.

Well, just to let you know how it went for me, I purchased a LG external hard drive from circuit city the other day and it only cost me around $65 after taxes and from the rating on-line, it got a 4.4 out of 5.0. So far I really love it! I dumped ALL of my photos, (which was only about 10Gb) on a couple dvds and then I will make a back-up copy of each of those and then probably once a year make another back-up copy so as I never have to worry about losing it! I think everyone here is pretty spot on; have a couple different back-up types, just in case! Good Luck!!! :thumbsup2

[MICKEY88]

So which is it - gold single-layer discs or dual-layer discs? :confused3
that's simple.... gold dual layer disks...:thumbsup2
Seriously, though, I agree with Mark. I've been burning CDs for well over 10 years and the vast majority are still just fine. . :teeth:

vast majority..?? I guess that's OK if you know which disks to put the pics you don't care about... but what if that once in a lifetime vacation is on one of those disks that goes bad...??

[Groucho]

vast majority..?? I guess that's OK if you know which disks to put the pics you don't care about... but what if that once in a lifetime vacation is on one of those disks that goes bad...??
That's why I burn two copies.

If I get 1-2 that fail because of disc deterioration out of many hundreds over 10 years, I think that's pretty darn good. The notion (not saying that you're saying this, but some do) that your discs will flat-out melt or explode or otherwise self-destruct after a couple years if you don't buy the archival discs is just plain untrue.

[scottie]

I am now thinking about either an internal dvd burner or a Internal Hard drive. How to I figure out what kind will work in my Dell Dimension 8200? I wasn’t sure if I need to look for a particular type that would be compatible with this computer that is a handful of years old.

[Groucho]

Most internal DVD burners are IDE (aka PATA). Hard drives are usually either IDE or SATA. You can get SATA DVD burners, but they're not as common.

An IDE drive (DVD burner or hard drive) should work fine in your PC.

For putting in a burner, the best thing to do is to replace your existing CD or DVD drive. The connections will be the same, the only thing to pay attention to is there's a "jumper" (little plastic thing that you position to change settings) on the back of the drives, which can be set to Master, Slave, or CS (Cable Select). Make sure the new drive is set to the same as the old one. Where the jumper is and what the positions are is almost always clearly written on a label on top of the drive.

There's no drivers or anything to install, you'll just have to make sure that you have software that can burn a DVD. If it's a "retail package" (not OEM) DVD burner, like you'd find at Best Buy or wherever, then it will probably come with a stripped-down burning program like Nero Express, which will probably be fine.

[scottie]

Thanks for the info. When I was doing a bit of searching on the Dell site today, it mentioned the hard drive as being ATA100? Is that a specific type of drive that I need to use?


Most internal DVD burners are IDE (aka PATA). Hard drives are usually either IDE or SATA. You can get SATA DVD burners, but they're not as common.

An IDE drive (DVD burner or hard drive) should work fine in your PC.

For putting in a burner, the best thing to do is to replace your existing CD or DVD drive. The connections will be the same, the only thing to pay attention to is there's a "jumper" (little plastic thing that you position to change settings) on the back of the drives, which can be set to Master, Slave, or CS (Cable Select). Make sure the new drive is set to the same as the old one. Where the jumper is and what the positions are is almost always clearly written on a label on top of the drive.

There's no drivers or anything to install, you'll just have to make sure that you have software that can burn a DVD. If it's a "retail package" (not OEM) DVD burner, like you'd find at Best Buy or wherever, then it will probably come with a stripped-down burning program like Nero Express, which will probably be fine.

[Groucho]

Thanks for the info. When I was doing a bit of searching on the Dell site today, it mentioned the hard drive as being ATA100? Is that a specific type of drive that I need to use?
That is an IDE drive. The ATA is actually Parallel ATA (aka PATA, as opposed to Serial ATA or SATA) and the last number is the maximum interface speed - either 66, 100, or 133. That is just the speed of the interface, not of the drive, and any speed drive should work fine, even if your PC doesn't support the higher speed. (It's like USB in this case, USB2 stuff works fine in USB1 PCs, just slower.)

So, basically, most any IDE/PATA/ATA66/ATA100/ATA133 drive should work OK. That being said, there are sometimes size limits as to what the PC will recognize, but that's usually only an issue if it's your main drive - for a second drive, Windows will generally recognize the full size of the drive.

[Master Mason]

If you really want to use hard disks for storage, I would suggest buying or building a raid set up, so that if one of the disks fail you do not lose your data. With the cost of HD's now they really aren't out of reach cost wise anymore.

For me, I back up on DVD and Smugmug. It's not a perfect system, but I'm comfortable with it.

[scottie]

If I am swaping out an internal CD burner for a internal DVD burner, is there a certain type of drive I will have to look for, to work with my Dell 8200? I am checking out drives on newegg now and see a few different type... SATA, IDE, ATAPI/EIDE, PATA.

I just want to be able to unplug the factory CD burner and install a dvd burner in its place without having to use new cables etc, if possible.

[MarkBarbieri]

If I am swaping out an internal CD burner for a internal DVD burner, is there a certain type of drive I will have to look for, to work with my Dell 8200? I am checking out drives on newegg now and see a few different type... SATA, IDE, ATAPI/EIDE, PATA.

I just want to be able to unplug the factory CD burner and install a dvd burner in its place without having to use new cables etc, if possible.

Open the case and look at it. A PATA (IDE) burner will have a row of about 40 pins into which you plug a cable with about 40 holes. An SATA burner (rare until recently) will have a connector with a thin sort of L shaped connector.

If it's an SATA, it is an easy swap. If it is IDE, you have one more complication to deal with. You can connect up to two IDE drives on one cable. One must be configured as the Master and, if there are two, the other must be the Slave. If you have one cable connecting both your burner and another drive (hard drive, CD, DVD), you must determine if it is a master or slave. Once you determine that, you must set up the new drive to be the same.

[MarkBarbieri]

Another backup option is to print your photos. No, not normal photo prints. With those, the colors fade. You can actually print the digitized binary data file that represents your picture. For effeciency sake, you'll want to print it as a hexadecimal file rather than just binary. It'll take a lot of paper to store and it'll be a pain to rekey it if you need to go to backup, but it's another option if you are one of those people that feels compelled to have a hard copy backup of everything.

[scottie]

Open the case and look at it. A PATA (IDE) burner will have a row of about 40 pins into which you plug a cable with about 40 holes. An SATA burner (rare until recently) will have a connector with a thin sort of L shaped connector.

If it's an SATA, it is an easy swap. If it is IDE, you have one more complication to deal with. You can connect up to two IDE drives on one cable. One must be configured as the Master and, if there are two, the other must be the Slave. If you have one cable connecting both your burner and another drive (hard drive, CD, DVD), you must determine if it is a master or slave. Once you determine that, you must set up the new drive to be the same.

I was checking out the Dell site and their replacement drive for my model does say it is an IDE drive, so I am going to assume there are IDE drives in there now.
Currently, there is a CD burner, DVD player and one ATA100 40gb hard drive. I would like to swap out either the CD burner or DVD player with a DVD burner drive, keep the 40gb hard drive, and add a second ATA 100 hard drive. Do you think I will run into any issues (or at least issues for some who is not fully computer literate)?
Also, would I be better swapping out the factory CD burner or DVD Player to replace with a DVD burner?

[Groucho]

Most PCs can handle four IDE devices.

Quick summary of how it works: You have two IDE channels, Primary and Secondary (often marked as IDE1 and IDE2 on the motherboard.) Each channel has a Master and a Slave. There's your four.

The primary and the secondary IDE channels each have a wide rectangular set of pins on the motherboard. There are two IDE cables, ribbon cables that are, oh, 2" wide or so. Older ones are 40-pin, newer ones are 80-pin (which is necessary for the faster speeds.) The connectors are the same, but there are more wires in the cable. Anyway, each cable has one connector on one end and two relatively close on the other. The one by itself plugs into the motherboard, the other end plugs into your IDE devices, like a hard drive or DVD drive.

You currently have a single hard drive and two optical (CD/DVD) drives. Almost certainly, your hard drive is the Primary Master drive. There is no Primary Slave drive. The CD and DVD are the Secondary Master and Slave drives. You can replace whichever one you want, just make sure that the jumper on the back is the same (Master or Slave or CS/Cable Select.) It makes no difference if you replace the CD or the DVD drive. I'd probably pull the CD drive just to have two drives capable of reading DVDs. (Handy if one of them turns out to be better at reading scratched discs than the other.)

To add another hard drive, you'll probably be able to just set its jumper to Cable Select (which it may be set to by default) and away you go. If there are any problems, look at both the old drive and the new one, and manually set the old one to Master and the new one to Slave.

Once it's all in there, boot up and off the top of my head, I don't remember if Windows will automatically prompt you to format it. If it doesn't, right-click My Computer and go into Manage. Go to Disk Management and you should see the new drive listed there, with the space listed as empty. You should be able to right-click it and create a Primary partition, then format it (NTFS format).

If it's a storebought drive, then there will almost certainly be instructions that explain it better than I'm doing. If you're not sure what you're doing, you will probably be best with one of those, that way you have a little more documentation, rather than an OEM one bought online where you get just the drive itself and nothing else - no box even. So if you do buy online, make sure you buy the Retail one. These also come with new 80-pin cables in the box if your existing cables are the older ones.

[scottie]

I went ahead and ordered a Pioneer DVD Burner from Newegg yesterday. It had great reviews so I feel safe with the buy and for 30.00 shipped I am happy! Next search: harddrive and USB hub :surfweb:

[YEKCIM]

Scottie,

I have a Dell Dim 4600 which I think is about the same age as your 8200. I replaced the DVD-ROM drive with a DVD-burner a couple years ago, which was no biggie. I believe, though, that Dell uses the "CS" (Cable Select) jumper setting on all drives. Just set the new drive the same way as the one you are replacing and you should be fine.

Also, fwiw, I typically d/l directly to my external HD and periodically make a DVD-R backup, which is then immediately stored in my safe deposit box at the bank.

~Ed

[mabas9395]

Once you get your new DVD burner, just be sure to actually use it. Those backup disks don't burn themselves. :thumbsup2

I went most of 2007 without making any backups to disk (had a secondary HD though). Finally took some time over Christmas vacation to just sit down and burn two copies of everything. Felt great.

But here we are the middle of March and I haven't done anything since. :confused3

[Groucho]

YEKCIM is right, the Dell most likely uses Cable Select.

One other thing - in whatever software you use, make sure to turn on "verify" after burning a disc - this will re-read the disc after burning to make sure that it's 100% error-free. Only takes a few minutes and is worth it for the peace of mind.

In Nero, it's a checkbox that's only visible during burning; in Roxio, it's an option that's in one of the options or properties you get to from a drop-down menu.