Save a Copy of Your Picture Files

Many people store pictures on their hard drive. It has all the space they need, and it’s great for organizing files in folders. But if that drive gets ruined, the pictures stored on it can be damaged or lost. It's a disaster that you can easily avoid by regularly saving files to an additional location. Try to schedule a routine monthly backup to ensure your pictures will be around in the future.

Copy Pictures to an IOMEGA Zip Disk

To locate the photos you want to back up, you can use either My Computer or Windows Explorer to copy the picture files to another location. This procedure explains how to save copies using Windows Explorer.

1. Insert a Zip disk into the Zip drive on your computer.

2. Click the Start button, point to Programs, and then click Windows Explorer.

3. 

4. In the left pane of Windows Explorer, locate the pictures you want to copy.

5. Scroll up or down and open folders to find the picture files. When you open a folder, the picture files are listed in the right pane.

   

6. In the left pane, locate the Zip drive but do not open it. (You may need to click the plus sign in front of My Computer to see the Zip drive.)

7. To copy files and folders, you must be able to see both the files and folders you are copying and the place to which you are copying them (in this case, the Zip drive) on the screen at the same time.

   

8. In the right pane, choose all the photos that you want to copy.

9. To choose a group of pictures in a row, click the first picture, hold down the Shift key on the keyboard, and then click the last picture. This highlights the picture files.

   

   To choose files that aren’t in a row, hold down the Control key then click every picture you want to copy.

   

   Note: You can also copy an entire folder and its contents by clicking the folder to highlight it.

10. Release the Shift or Control key.

11. The picture files remain highlighted.

12. Click the highlighted files, hold down the mouse button, and drag the highlighted files onto the Zip drive icon in the left pane.

13. A faint version of the icons appears on the screen as you drag.

    

14. Release the mouse button to copy the files onto the Zip drive.

15. Click the Zip drive to verify that the files were copied. The list of files and folders should appear in the right pane of Windows Explorer.

    

16. Remove the Zip disk and store it in a safe place away from heat, dust, and magnets.

Copy Pictures to a CD

CDs are the most popular media for backing up information. They are not affected by magnetic fields, and they store far more data than a Zip disk.

If you have a CD-R (Compact Disc-Recordable) or CD-RW (Compact Disc-Rewritable) drive, then copy your picture files to a CD as a backup. For instructions, refer to the manual or online help that came with your computer or with your CD-R or CD-RW drive.