Saturday, July 19, 2014

Organization

  Dried and Salted - SOLD
12" x 24"  Oil on canvas

I've done the evitable mistake that seems to be an annual event with me.  I erased a group of reference images, some of which were important to future work, from my computer while organizing images into groups. In my flurry of efficiency I emptied the Recycle Bin too.  Of course I would do that right away instead of waiting weeks or months with no chance of salvation.  Sigh.

Like most artists I put off the work that I least enjoy, until it becomes necessary to organize just so I can find things.  That includes my studio as well as my electronic world.  But I did it and no one died (aside from a bit of my brain!) so I will bite the bullet this time and hook into an a more advanced backup system for my computer.  I have an external hard drive that is nearly at capacity and still don't add all the information I should on a regular basis.  I have a 64GB memory stick where I store important current files that I use frequently, but live in fear that I'll lose it.

I'm sure I'm not alone in my lack of organizing and storage.  Come on, you can confess.  We all do it - or more to the point, don't do it. Human nature is to procrastinate until an event pushes action.  Old dogs can still learn new tricks and I've learned mine.  It just takes awhile.  Then there is the discussion around external hard drive or offline/cloud  based storage.  The pros and cons of both are discussed here.

So now which online site to choose?  It seems most are in the USA, which is ok, although I'd prefer a Canadian company, but the ones I have sourced seem geared more towards large business instead of smaller clients.  Going US means it becomes pricier with the currency exchange rate being what it is right now.

How do you store your computer data?  External hard drive or online storage?  What is your favourite online storage site?

9 comments:

RH Carpenter said...

I am sorry you accidentally deleted things you needed - it has happened to all of us at one time or another. I use an external hard drive called My Book from WD that holds 2 terrabytes TB of info on it. When we switched fromthe old desktop that had Windows XP to the new one, my sister, our computer guru, was able to move everything from the old computer to the external hard drive and then to the new computer (the things we still needed and used) in a few hours time. I am old enough to distrust letting someone else control and handle your data, especially all your photos and paintings, so won't use a Cloud service unless I am forced to in the future.

theartistsday said...

I use Picassa and an external hard drive when I think of it. My core images which I call ultimate inventory I put on disk as well. I lost a number of images a few years ago in "the great computer crash" but in a way I felt quite liberated. less baggage!

Jeanette Jobson said...

These things happen Rhonda, its all a learning process. I have an external hard drive too but forget to load things onto it and there is a thought of it going kaput one day too. This is why I consider online storage.

I don't have any fears around someone else storing my data, it would be just another directory on some server elsewhere.

Mary, I am edging towards online storage that is automatic and updates daily without me having to think about it. This is why I hope to move from an external drive.

I agree that total elimination of data is one way of organizing! :) We all keep too much 'stuff' and purging can be good. But not quite yet..

Jennifer Rose said...

I have a 2tb external drive, need another one. 4 different sized keys, my tablet if I really need to find space(mini sd card in it) and google drive if I don't have any of those things on me and need to back something up
any photos I take with my phone, automatically get updated to google when I get home to wifi so dont have to worry about losing those photos

Jeanette Jobson said...

Sounds like you're pretty much covered Jen. I have a few places where files are kept but I never seem to remember to add stuff to them. I need an automatic backup - or an assistant. :)

Jennifer Rose said...

hubby comes comes in pretty handy when it comes to tech stuff, need to do something with his computer degree :p

Alex said...

I'm very disordered too. I always use Dropbox for online storage.

Jeanette Jobson said...

Do you rent him out Jen? ;)

I have only used Dropbox to transfer large files Alex. I must look into it.

Unknown said...

I saw this question on FB but didn't realise you'd lost files. That sucks, sorry.

Think I said there, I use dropbox for storage as well as file transfer. I'm really happy with it especially as I have my phone synced with it so all photos taken with it(which most reference photos are) get uploaded as soon as I'm on wifi :)