Archive your photos fast

Memories lost?

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 email them off 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.

See it in action

Watch the video, and then follow the steps below to do it yourself. Watching the video requires that you have Windows Media Player.

Watch the video now.

How to preserve your pictures on a CD

The first step is to make sure that the pictures you want to archive will fit on a CD.

1.	Click Start, and then click My Pictures.
2.	To select multiple folders containing pictures, hold down the CTRL key while making your selections.
3.	If all the pictures are in one folder, you can select the entire contents of the folder. Double-click the folder containing the pictures, and, on the Edit menu, click Select All.
4.	To check the size of your selection, on the File menu, click Properties.
5.	In the Properties dialog box, click the General tab, and then look at the Size field. If the size shown is smaller than the capacity of your CD (usually 640 to 720 MB), the pictures will fit on the CD. If the size is larger than this, you have to select fewer pictures to save to the CD.
6.	Click OK.

Once you've checked the file size of your pictures, you're ready to preserve them on a CD.

1.	Under Picture Tasks, click Copy to CD.
2.	When Microsoft Windows XP is ready to copy or write the files to the CD, a message balloon appears. Click the message balloon. You will see a window showing the folders that you have selected to write to the CD.
3.	Click Write these files to CD in the CD Writing Tasks area. The Windows XP CD Writing Wizard starts.
4.	Type a name for your CD in the CD name box, and click Next.
5.	If you have already inserted a blank CD into the CD drive, your files will start copying. If you have not inserted a blank CD into the drive, you will be prompted to do so.
6.	If the CD Writing Wizard asks "Do you want to create a HighMAT-compatible CD?", leave the check box unselected, and click Next.
7.	Wait while Windows XP writes your files to the CD. When you have successfully written your files to the CD, the CD is ejected from the drive.
8.	Click Finish.

To verify that the pictures were copied successfully to the CD or to look at the pictures you preserved on a CD at a later time:

1.	Insert the CD into the CD drive, and close the drive. When prompted, click Open folder to view files using Windows Explorer, and then click OK.
2.	Double-click the folder with the pictures, and then double-click the pictures you want to view.
3.	When you are finished, close the window.

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.

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