Archive your photos in just minutes
By Katherine Murray
Capturing pictures with your digital camera is so easy that you're sure to collect hundreds—if not thousands—of photos in a very short time, all stored on your computer. After you print pictures or send them via e-mail to family and friends, you need a way to preserve them for the future. That's why remembering to archive your digital photos to CD is so critical. After all, "memories lost" is not a phrase that you want to describe the state of your digital photos.
If you take just a few minutes each month you can easily archive your photos. You'll rest easy knowing that you always have backup copies safely stored away.
What you'll need
Tip: Make a recurring appointment on your calendar each month to remind you to archive your digital photos.
To archive photos
1. | Open your My Pictures folder. |
2. | Select the folders that you want to archive.
It makes sense to archive folders that have similar themes together (for example, vacations, kids, events) so you can easily find what you need at a later date. Archiving in this way also makes titling the CD easier.  |
3. | After you select the folders, click Copy to CD in the Picture Tasks area. Windows XP prepares the files for copying to CD (also called "burning").  |
4. | When Windows XP is ready to write the files to the CD, a message balloon pops up from the taskbar informing you that You have files waiting to be written to the CD. To see the files now, click this balloon. Click the message balloon.  |
5. | A window showing the folders that you have selected to write to the CD appears. (Check to make sure that the window contains the folders that you want to write to the CD; if not, close the window and reselect the folders that you want.)  |
6. | Click Write these files to CD in the CD Writing Tasks area.  |
7. | If you have not yet inserted a blank CD in the drive, that's okay. The next screen tells you to Insert a writable disk to continue. |
8. | Insert your blank CD into the drive and click Next. The Windows XP CD Writing Wizard launches automatically. |
9. | Type a name for your CD and click Next.  |
10. | If the CD Writing Wizard asks Do you want to create a HighMAT-compatible CD?, leave the check box unmarked and click Next.  |
11. | Windows XP begins writing your files to the CD, and asks you to Please wait...  |
12. | When the files have been written to the CD, the Completing the CD Writing Wizard screen tells you that You have successfully written your files to the CD.  |
13. | Click Finish and you're done! |
Take a moment and view the images from the CD to ensure that they have been copied successfully.
Before you put the CD away in a case, you can create a CD label using one of the photos archived on the disk that will easily remind you of its contents. If you don't want to do that, simply use a felt-tipped pen to write a title on the CD, describing its contents.
Tip: If you really want to preserve these memories, make sure you store them somewhere secure, such as in your family's lockbox or a fireproof safe. (Many people do this with their film negatives, so why shouldn't you do it with your CDs?) The peace of mind you'll have knowing your photographic history is carefully preserved is more than worth the minimal effort.
