Genealogy Chat

I have gone and done it treated myself to a mobile hard drive.
Can someone tell me please in English what I do.
I have loads of files in my documents do I just copy one at a time or do I highlight a few and copy.
Also what would this hard drive come up as please when I am backing my family history up.
Can you just keep putting this hard drive in and adding more photos and stuff.
Sorry to be a bit thick?

Hiya

If you'are talking about a second hard drive thats in a case and plugs into the back (or front) of your pc via a usb connection, then you can plug it in and use it as and when you want. As opposed to an internal hard drive that will be fitted into your pc and be permenantly available.

My extra Hard Drive shows up as an F Drive in my computer when I plug it in.

I tend to transfer my files one at a time, but I think if I remember correctly I did transfer a few at a time when I first got it:-)

Hope this helps - if not pm me and I'll try to explain better:-)

Bacardi XX

Thankyou I will have a go it is an external one a small box

There is no need to keep removing the drive (except for space on desk reasons), it will sit there quite happily and should show as removable disk drive given the next spare drive letter.

Plug it in and leave it pugged in. Open up Windows File Explorer (*not* Internet Explorer) - it's worth having a shortcut to this program on your desktop. (It's found under Start - All Programs - Accessories.) You'll see all your drives under My Computer - lets say your new one is drive F. One way to do it is to highlight drive F and create a new folder - with my classic setup, this is an option under the file menu - and rename the new folder as say 2007-12-31. Now on your C drive, just highlight the desired folders/files, right-click and copy, then on the F drive, highlight the new folder 2007-12-31, right-click and paste - always copy and paste - don't cut and paste or drag and drop, as you want a copy on each drive.

I personally wouldn't bother picking out which files I wanted - I'ld copy the whole folder-full - I might be picky about the folders though. What you back-up depends on how you use your PC. Likely suggestions are "My Documents" - I also keep stuff in a folder on my C drive called "genealogy", so I'ld copy that - my emailer is Eudora, which has its own folder under "Progrqam Files". This folder contains the program itself + some other files, + a whole mess of subfolders. The only files I want to copy are called things like "In.mbx", "In.toc" etc, (i.e., my "In" mailbox with its table of contents), and the only subfolder I want to copy is called "attach" on my PC, and contains all my incoming attachments. (NB I've set up my file explorer to "show details" and among the details I show is "type", so clicking on this column header sorts the files in the folder so that all .mbx files appear together, as do all .toc's.)

If you don't know where your equivalents are, do a search for a file name someone recently sent you as an attachment, or create a new mailbox with a peculiar name and search for files whose names incorporate your peculiar name.
Finally, it's easier to copy many files at once - if your files don't appear as a contiguous block (which would be easy to highlight simultaneously), you can highlight a noncontiguous set by highlighing each item in turn while keeping the control key depressed.