or, "The Storage Sheds of Computers."

heh.

So here's the thing:  Digital Scrapbooking is great because it doesn’t take up space in your house.  No papers to stack, ribbons to roll, eyelets to organize, adhesive, tools, paint, etc, to store . . . BUT . . . all the cool digital scrapbooking kits, storing your digital photos, and saving a layered copy (in Adobe Photoshop Image format!) of all your computer generated scrapbook layouts . . . that starts to take up a LOT of space. 

You have a finite amount of space on your computer's hard drive -- you CAN run out.  You need a certain amount of memory just for your computer to run.  Your hard drive needs to use a certain amount of space to store all the program files and windows files needed just to operate the computer.  Then there’s all the stuff you’ve saved.  Pictures, more programs, Word or Excel files, etc. You don't want your system full-up and bogged down.

Enter external hard drives (EHD's).

To see how much space is currently full on your computer, do this:  Open up “My computer.”  Right click on the C: drive to open up a pop-up box and choose “Properties.”  In the “general” tab, you’ll see a pie chart showing how much space in your computer is currently used.  If that pie chart is showing a lot of blue and not much pink (thus showing that your computer’s memory is about full!!!) you may want to seriously think about an EHD.

You can check to see how much space just your digital scrappin’ stuff is taking up (if you have a lot of kits or a lot of Photoshop layered files saved).  To do this, make sure everything is in one file folder (can be in several sub-folders, but you may as well have everything together in one place anyway!)  Right click on the folder and choose “Properties” from the pop-up box.  Make sure the “general” tab at the top is selected.  As you can see here, my Digi-Scrappin’ folder where I keep my kits and Photoshop layouts takes up 8.97 GBs.  (Well, and that’s not including 4.15 GBs of new kits that I have in another folder that I haven’t sorted out and put IN my Digi-Scrappin’ folder.)  So my total Digi-Scrappin’ stuff (13.12 GBs worth) would take up almost 18% of my computer’s hard-drive, but only 9% of my EHD (and if you take the hard-drive PLUS my EHD – which is what I have available to me – is just 6%).  So with my EHD I have a TON of space to work with and when someone puts out a cool new freebie, I don’t have to stress about whether I have room to download it!

SO . . . for pretty cheap you can double or triple your computer’s storage space with an External Hard Drive.  You won’t even have to open the computer box to install it!  (Umm, ‘cause it’s EXTERNAL.  heh.)

I got my 150 GB External Hard Drive for $185.  I’m sure you can get a better deal, but I was in a hurry!  (We were about to change out my computer at work and I didn’t want to deal with backing up to a bunch of disks.  The added bonus?  Now I truly have everything from work separate from my personal stuff – which I’m allowed to play with during lunch.  Everything personal is on my EHD.)

EHD’s have their own power supply (cord to plug into a wall outlet), and a cord that plugs from the back of the EHD to a USB port in your computer.  A high speed USB port is preferable, but a normal one will work just fine.  EHDs also have their own on/off switch (you have to turn it on and off separate from the computer.)  EHDs are usually designed to sit flat on a desktop or on your computer box (mine can stand up or lay flat.)

The EHD is accessed through the “MyComputer” icon on your desktop.  If the EHD is not turned on, it won’t show up as an available drive.  The drive letters for EHD’s may vary – in my computer, the hard drive is C:, the CD drive is D:, and the EHD is E:. 

There are 3 ways to get information written to your EHD:
1. Save TO it directly – when you select “save as,” use the file drop down and select the EHD drive.  (see screenshot, at right.)
2. Save to your desktop, then drag the file to the EHD.
3. Right click on the file/folder from the desktop and choose “send to” then “(EHD drive letter or name.)”

When dragging within the EHD, it’s just like the C: drive – the file will MOVE to the new location and no longer be at the original location.  BUT, moving a file from the desktop to the EHD (and vice versa), dragging creates a COPY – the original remains.

The EHD functions just like a hard drive – when you double click to open it, you can see the folders and files you have saved there, in a regular file browser.

EHDs are not to be used for PORTABLE storage – bumping and moving it TOO much could cause your EHD to corrupt.  Also, you should still back up all important files from the EHD to another media like a CD or DVD.  EHDs are not fail-proof, and aside from the EHD corrupting or getting fried (you never know) there’s always the chance of a fire or theft. { BUT I just found one that IS designed to be portable, and it looks pretty cool!  Click here.  Shoot, now I want to buy it.  LOL. }

The saving process  -– I personally do all my saving, downloading, unzipping, and sorting of files and folders FIRST on my desktop.  THEN I transfer my files to the EHD.  When you save, make sure everything has saved (or transferred to the EHD) before you delete the originals.  Check the thumbnail pictures AND the file details to make sure the file is completely there.  (Once I was burning a picture disk and when I went to print the pictures at Walgreens, nothing showed up on the disk.  I had checked to make sure all the file names were there, so I was confused.  I put the disk back in the computer, opened it up, and chose to view the DETAILS instead of the ICONS and saw that although all the file names were there, they each showed 0 KBs under the size of the files – thus they hadn’t really saved.  Luckily I still had my originals backed up!)  If you’re using the EHD JUST to back up your hard drive, then you might be ok without another backup . . . except for the fire/theft scenario.

You can get software to auto back-up your entire HD or selected parts of it at a certain time every day.  I know nothing about it, though, so you may want to ask someone else.  ;o)

There’s some debate as to whether it’s better to leave the EHD off when not in use, or if the act of turning it on and off all the time is actually more damaging than having it on all the time.  That’s your call.  What’s important in this is that is has room to “breathe” – it needs some air circulation.