Guest Janice Posted September 15, 2007 Posted September 15, 2007 My hard drive is dying and i want to back up my picture folder, which is less than 2 GB. I bought a 2 GB flash drive. Is this a good way to back them up? And if i add more pictures to my computer later, can i add them to my flash drive or will it overwrite what is already on it? Or, if i back up the picture folder a second time (with the additonal photos) will it write over my original back up? I hope this makes sense. Thanks -- Janice
Guest R. McCarty Posted September 15, 2007 Posted September 15, 2007 Re: Flash Drive Pictures ( .Jpg ) are normally in a compressed format. So using a Zip or compression app won't yield any size benefits. Best to just do a simple "Send To" from your My Pictures folder to the drive letter assigned to the Flash Drive. One additional note, A flash drive is itself erasable. While having a copy is a start, important data should be saved to a more "Permanent" type of media such as CD-R or DVD-R disks. In addition to that you'd want a copy offsite ( not in your home ) such as a Bank lock box. You can get small size DVD-R disks that will fit in most standard bank boxes. They hold just under 2.0 Gigabytes each as opposed to standard size DVD-Rs that hold 4.7 Gigabytes. Whenever you backup data - ALWAYS explore or open a sample from the Copy. Just because it says copy was completed successfully doesn't always guarantee the data on the backup is readable. "Janice" <Janice@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:C55FB12A-F6CA-4F1D-B5FB-FC5AAD14C4C0@microsoft.com... > My hard drive is dying and i want to back up my picture folder, which is > less > than 2 GB. I bought a 2 GB flash drive. Is this a good way to back them > up? > And if i add more pictures to my computer later, can i add them to my > flash > drive or will it overwrite what is already on it? Or, if i back up the > picture folder a second time (with the additonal photos) will it write > over > my original back up? I hope this makes sense. Thanks > -- > Janice
Guest Patrick Keenan Posted September 15, 2007 Posted September 15, 2007 Re: Flash Drive "Janice" <Janice@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:C55FB12A-F6CA-4F1D-B5FB-FC5AAD14C4C0@microsoft.com... > My hard drive is dying and i want to back up my picture folder, which is > less > than 2 GB. I bought a 2 GB flash drive. Is this a good way to back them > up? > And if i add more pictures to my computer later, can i add them to my > flash > drive or will it overwrite what is already on it? Or, if i back up the > picture folder a second time (with the additonal photos) will it write > over > my original back up? I hope this makes sense. Thanks > -- > Janice As mentioned, you can do simple copies to the drive. A very helpful tool for this is FileSync, http://www.fileware.com . Unlike most of the MS copy tools, FileSync won't just silently give up when copying files. If a problem appears, the problem file will be noted and the next file copied. At the end, you'll get a list of the files that didn't copy, and can attempt a re-copy of just the files that didn't copy. As to overwriting, by default, files of the same name will not be overwritten *unless you say so*. If you say no, and there's no more room, the copy will stop. Finally, as to flash drives as backup media - they are known to suddenly and completely fail. I have several such drives in my desk that just stopped working. So, these drives are very useful for moving data, but cannot be relied on for backup. You must have some other form of long-term storage, such as DVD or hard disk (though hard disks also fail, as you know). And you should really have multiple copies. HTH -pk
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