I have over the years  saved large number of photos in my computer. I now want to transfer them to a memory stick leaving the originals in place on the computer.

At the moment all I can think of is to copy  each file individually and drag the copy to the memory stick.

There must an easier and quicker way. Advice needed from an expert please.

Which operation system do you have?

Are all the files in one folder or all over the place?

 

In Windows, and probably also in other systems, you can search (a folder or a drive or the whole computer) for image files. Then maybe you have a list of 1000 files.

Then drag and drop them to the memory stick. That's an easy way to copy them all.

 

If you want some more logic what is what then I suggest you use imagine software like i.e. ACDSee to sort and tag your files.

I know many people who have so many files that they just lost the overview. And often they have backups and backups of backups so they have the same files multiple times. Try to avoid that. ???? 

There are about 30 folders in the "pictures" memory section of Win7. Some folders contain only 1 image, most have several images all relating to each other. 

Highlight in file explorer (hold crtl key) all the folders and right click copy and then paste to the memory stick.

 

 

 

Insert flash drive into USB port and open windows explorer, where the flash drive will show up ( probably ) at the bottom of other folders.

You can now open pictures library and left click and drag the folders you want to copy to the flash drive or copy paste.

Moving/ copying to the flash drive will not remove them from your computer picture library.

 

I suggest you practice on some unessential photos before on the ones you don't want to lose.

 

Don't remove flash drive without getting permission from computer to do so or your flash drive may be damaged.

 

Count yourself lucky you only have 30 folders. I have hundreds of folders to back up with many gigabytes of data. Luckily transferring data has got a lot faster since I started saving my photos on computer last century, and USB 3 is a great advance in speed.

15 minutes ago, lopburi3 said:

Highlight in file explorer (hold crtl key) all the folders and right click copy and then paste to the memory stick.

While that is certainly OK to do, I always transfer each folder separately so I know each folder did get moved. If moving several at a time and one folder creates a moving problem it's a pain having to backtrack and repeat till problem folder is found. Sometimes just a title too long will stop transferring.

I use file synchronization SW for such tasks.

You have better control what happens and check/compare the result.

I suggest "FreeFileSync", https://freefilesync.org/

If your collection grows, simply redo and only changed/new files will be copied.

 

I use it to do a complete mirror(copy) of all relevant files on my data partition of the PC to the laptop.

From time to time do sync to an external hard drive.

 

 

3 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

While that is certainly OK to do, I always transfer each folder separately so I know each folder did get moved. If moving several at a time and one folder creates a moving problem it's a pain having to backtrack and repeat till problem folder is found. Sometimes just a title too long will stop transferring.

????

9 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

While that is certainly OK to do, I always transfer each folder separately so I know each folder did get moved. If moving several at a time and one folder creates a moving problem it's a pain having to backtrack and repeat till problem folder is found. Sometimes just a title too long will stop transferring.

Typical scenario which can easily be avoided/overcome with a proper sync tool like described.

1 minute ago, KhunBENQ said:

Typical scenario which can easily be avoided/overcome with a proper sync tool like described.

The less stuff I have on my computer the better. I used to have ACEE DCEE ( ? spelling ) but that was way back on 98 or something.

 

I usually read a book or something if doing a lot of backups.

2 minutes ago, KhunBENQ said:

Typical scenario which can easily be avoided/overcome with a proper sync tool like described.

9 minutes ago, lopburi3 said:

????

Backing up folders is the least of my problems. I have thousands of photos from my travels and most are copied a few times. As I'm now sorting all my photos I might have to check hundreds of photos individually, and that's just from one country. Unfortunately I sometimes saved the same photos with different titles. Talking about 40 years worth of photos ( I scanned most of the ones from before digital camera over 5 years ).

3 minutes ago, lopburi3 said:

Everyone is free to keep it stupid.

1 minute ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Backing up folders is the least of my problems. I have thousands of photos from my travels and most are copied a few times. As I'm now sorting all my photos I might have to check hundreds of photos individually, and that's just from one country. Unfortunately I sometimes saved the same photos with different titles. Talking about 40 years worth of photos ( I scanned most of the ones from before digital camera over 5 years ).

Should I now suggest the right tools for such task?

Finding duplicates, renaming pictures from the EXIF data (if available)?

I better won't.

Duplicate finding is peanuts even with differing names.

Renaming pictures automatically can't be done "smart" just by time/date (like 20210302133944.jpg).

Smart means hours of manual inspection and renaming, sorting to folders with specific names (ThailandHoliday2005 etc.)

3 minutes ago, KhunBENQ said:

Should I now suggest the right tools for such task?

Finding duplicates, renaming pictures from the EXIF data (if available)?

I better won't.

Duplicate finding is peanuts even with differing names.

Renaming pictures automatically can't be done "smart" just by time/date (like 20210302133944.jpg).

Smart means hours of manual inspection and renaming, sorting to folders with specific names (ThailandHoliday2005 etc.)

I don't have a problem actually. These days the only time I look at my photos is when sorting them- so it's quite enjoyable.

I have many many thousands of photos, but the rather sad thing is that after I'm gone they'll just get deleted. I once showed some of Thailand to a friend, but they got bored after about 5 minutes. I guess photos only mean anything to the person that took them.

1 hour ago, KhunBENQ said:

I use file synchronization SW for such tasks.

You have better control what happens and check/compare the result.

I suggest "FreeFileSync", https://freefilesync.org/

If your collection grows, simply redo and only changed/new files will be copied.

 

I use it to do a complete mirror(copy) of all relevant files on my data partition of the PC to the laptop.

From time to time do sync to an external hard drive.

 

 

Freefilesync is great software.

And it's open source (for some reason F-Droid doesn't seem to have it).

 

Easy to do incremental backups using it.

24 minutes ago, JimmyJ said:

Freefilesync is great software.

And it's open source (for some reason F-Droid doesn't seem to have it).

 

Easy to do incremental backups using it.

 

I've been using "Beyond Compare" by Scooter Software for about 23 years. Does everything you can think of regarding copying and comparing files, folders and drives.   https://www.scootersoftware.com/features.php?zz=features_focused