The delivery of a Western Digital My Book Studio 3TB External Hard Drive last week had me backing up and upgrading my Apple MacBook Pro laptop all weekend. After hours of moving files from an older 500GB external drive, backing up the laptop, setting up Apple’s Time Machine to do automatic backups, creating a new Vault for Aperture (a special backup for Apple’s Aperture 3 software) and off loading older photo files to the new drive freeing up more space on the MacBook Pro…whew…before I knew it the weekend was over and I had not gone out and done any photography. On the plus side, I got in some reading while I waited for the computer to finish each task.
Looking out the window yesterday at a brown muted landscape, I thought back to my trip to North Dakota two years ago when cold and snow covered every mile between Syracuse, New York and Medora, North Dakota. In reviewing my photos from the Theodore Roosevelt National Park while reorganizing my photo library, I came across a set of photos to create a panoramic I had forgot about. For those of us missing winter here’s a view of the Badlands from the park (Click photo for a larger image).
Theodore Roosevelt National Park panoramic landscape of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park near Medora, North Dakota from January of 2010.
I will get back to shooting later this week. It took a long time but I feel much better about the security of my system and all the gigabytes of photographic images.
UPDATE: I woke up to six inches of snow this morning. I guess I should be careful what I wish for, eh? 🙂
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Wow, Scott, you know how to rock a weekend. 😉
I wish I were that organized. I do the best I can! We only got a dusting this am (phew!) but I haven’t been longing for snow… 😉
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Yeah, I was a real party animal, wasn’t I? 🙂 I have worked in computer rooms for years so this comes very natural to me. Though I do not do it enough.
This snow will not last long. Temperatures will be in the upper 40’s (F) by mid-week.
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I find that sorting photos can gobble up an evening easily. Can’t imagine how many you have to sort through …glad you got your snow 😉
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Got some snow and it will be all gone again soon as we get more unseasonable warm weather the rest of the week. I go have a lot of photos. Aperture 3 make it easy to manage.
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I remember when you wrote about your trip to North Dakota, – already two years ago? And another two years of photos to organize. It becomes more and more important to have a system. I´m still using Picasa, the tagging system there is very useful for me when I´m looking for specific colors or subjects. I´m close to need an external hard drive for the photos, though, because soon there will be too many to keep the computer working stabile. Do you keep your photos on the computer or on the external hard drive?
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I keep most of my photos on my computer. Older projects like sporting events I have moved to the external drive. Events like that I will not need on a moments notice so it is safe to have them offline. Someday I will get a network storage solution I can afford.
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That’s not fair, wishing for snow never does ME any good!!
Thanks for the reminder to back up my photos!
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Sorry, Michaela! I know you need any type of moisture down there! Maybe you’ll get a late winter blizzard. 🙂 Yes, one can never backup one’s photos enough!
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Definitely not wishing for snow in these parts. Had enough to last me for a long time last year. I need to get one of those big external hard drives. I wouldn’t be surprised if all my photo files weren’t part of the reason for my computer getting bogged down regularly. The thought of going through them all and pitching the unwanted and saving the others is a daunting task.
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Maybe…how filled up is your hard drive? Also, Windows is notorious for getting bogged down over time. If you haven’t in awhile, run programs like Spybot and AVG to see if they find any junk hanging around on your system. You can also re-fresh your Windows installation which usually brings a PC back to life.
Oh, yes, you need to get an external drive (feel free to use the link provided) and backup your system and your images. You never know when a hard drive or computer motherboard may give up the ghost.
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