working on digital photo org

[Monica]

After years... truly... of procrastinating, I've been organizing my digital photos into a standard year and month folders format, so I can actually FIND photos when I'm looking for them. And yes, I know I should have been doing this all along, but they aren't just mine. There's DH's phone, downloads from two nieces, my sister, my mom, MIL, SIL... and I still need to get my old external hard drive to talk to my laptop to migrate those over and then onto the hard drive I got last year.

I thought about tagging photos as I went, and I will do that with some of them, but right now I need to know what I have for each year so I can check if I've printed and scrapped them, and without some organization it's just not possible.

DH was laughing at me for being so happy every time I got one folder of random stuff properly sorted and into the correct folders, but I feel so much better with just the progress I made yesterday!

[pamcook]

Congratulations on your progress. It’s a lot of work. I’m impressed. Seriously.

[nchoney]

Hooray!! You'll be so happy when you get that big task accomplished. Its much easier to work with them once they're organized!! And super yay for backing them up!!

[Monica]

Debi, I have too many tech friends not to have learned to back things up. The one and only time I didn't get things backed up after a trip I lost all the photos. Although that was a fluke. We came home from vacation, transferred everything to the computer, went to bed, and I was going to copy to the external hard drive the next day, but the damn computer died on me. I lost everything from that Christmas that I'd taken. So I've learned the lesson of copy and promptly back it all up.

And Pam, it is a HUGE task! But one bite at a time will get it done.

[fuzzylover]

Monica, one folder sorted and catalogued is one folder closer to being finished. Good for you - keep it up

[nchoney]

Keep in mind.... everyone.... just because the computer dies, doesn't necessarily mean you've lost everything on the hard drive. Windows may not boot up... but quite often, the stored files are still on the drive... it can be used with an external enclosure and connected like an external hard drive and then you can retrieve the "lost" data...

[Monica]

Keep in mind.... everyone.... just because the computer dies, doesn't necessarily mean you've lost everything on the hard drive. Windows may not boot up... but quite often, the stored files are still on the drive... it can be used with an external enclosure and connected like an external hard drive and then you can retrieve the "lost" data...

We tried that one... the only photos not retrievable were the ones from that trip. I was not happy.

[nchoney]

Ouch.... that kind of thing makes me crazy.... just can't trust the computer

[Keitha]

Give yourself a big Atta Girl Monica for tackling that important project. It's something on my list as well; not so much that my digitized photos aren't in folders by month and year, but they're all over the place. I need to get them in one central location which I think is going to be the cloud, with a hard drive backup. I keep thinking of that old saying, How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.