? on backing up pics

[miss missy]

I have an extenal drive I use to back up my pics and stuff. Now I did do it a while ago, but have lots of new pics to add to it, how do I do that?

Will it try to reload all the ones I already have backed up? They are in my pics folder, how will it know to just add the ones it doesn't have yet? I am confused?

 

[garate55]

When you plug in your external hard drive do you get another drive letter option in your Windows explorer? If you do, that will be the place to open and look for your picture files or folder.

 

[miss missy]

Yes it is another letter. But how will it know what it already has vs. the new ones? Will it ask for every pic if I want to overtype it?

 

[jann1033]

i am just trying to see this as well as i can't get my pse to do an incremental backup...wondering if there is a way to back up a file without using another program ..i want to put it on a dvd but can't get any to back software i have ( nero, pse5)to back them up

 

[miss missy]

ok, I got it going lets see what it does

 

[garate55]

If you have pictures that you want to upload to your external drive it will only ask you if you want to replace files of the exact name in that folder only. So if there are photos that you have edited and left the name the same then it will ask you if you would like to replace the file.

If you accept it will automatically overwrite the file and you will have the new ones loaded but it will add the brand new ones also.

Hope this helps.

 

[Groucho]

This is one area where Windows Vista performs much better than Windows XP - it gives you more options, like to be able to skip any file that already exists when copying. (As well as giving you a fairly accurate estimate of time remaining, unlike every previous Microsoft OS.)

That alone isn't enough to justify Vista, though.

If you're backing up photos straight from the camera, it should be fairly easy to find the highest number on the external drive, and grab the ones since then.

If you're renaming photos and adding more to existing folders and such, then you'll want to use a stand-alone program which can compare folders. There are many, I usually use one called "ViceVersa" which is a free download. With that, you pick a source folder (the pics on your internal hard drive), a destination (the external drive), and make sure that "use subfolders" is checked. (In the first drop-down, I think.) It'll compare, then you can tell it to update target, or update and prune, or whatever you want.

There are certainly other programs that work as well and probably some that work better or at least look prettier, but it works well for me so I've stuck with it.

 

[miss missy]

Ok I went into my pictures folder and copy/pasted all those pics into the drive. It never asked me to over write, it looks like it just added them all. I can delete the ones I have already I suppose. The good thing is when I started using vista, I kept my pic in that folder, so all the new ones are there. This is the first backup using the vista laptop, so it worked ok. I guess next time is when I will have to choose the folder I want copied and not do select all.