Articles : Tutorials - Digital

How my new EHD solved all my (scrappy) problems

and one could solve some of your problems, too!

I have a new toy.

I'm pretty excited about this toy, because it has solved a lot of my problems. Mostly my scrapbooking problems. (Serious, I know.)

It’s a 500 GB external hard drive. (To give you a comparison, the computer I’m working on right now has a 75 GB hard drive.)

I firmly believe that after you have admitted to yourself that you are a (*gasp*) digi scrapper (or a dabbler, or a hybrid scrapper, or one who does both paper and digi), the first thing you need to make sure you have is an external hard drive (commonly referred to as an EHD. If you don’t know what an EHD is, read this article about it and come back.) Really, an EHD is something that anyone with a pixel collection of any kind needs. (Unless, that is, you are like me and have someone in the house who can install an additional internal drive to your computer. My hubby is a computer genius, so I’m good to go in that department -- but no, he can't help you. You probably live too far away, and I keep his schedule packed with a honey-do list. Note to self: harass hubby about fixing the solar lamp in the front yard that I stepped on yesterday.)

So anyway. Why do you need an extra drive? Your computer can not happily or safely hold unlimited amounts of data. Fill it too full, and it will crash. Any scrapbooker who has a digital camera probably has a photo collection reaching epic proportions -- it’s just a matter of time before that hard drive is completely full. Add digi-kits and layered Photoshop documents to the mix, and you’re just asking for trouble.

What scrappy problems did my new EHD solve?

-- All of my data was previously divided between two 100 GB external hard drives. Everything. Digital photos, scanned photos, my layouts in layered Photoshop documents, digital scrapbooking kits, Word and Excel documents . . . I had no idea what I had, or where. I have had a digital camera for four years and been a digi-scrapper for three years, so we’re talking a LOT of files.
-- It was hard to remember what I had. I spent time scanning pictures, not realizing I had already scanned them. Because I didn’t have my entire digital kit collection in one place, I bought duplicates of kits, forgetting I had already purchased them. The day after I put everything on my new EHD, Jen Wilson had a sale that included a lot of her old stuff -- I put five different items in my shopping cart before I looked in my EHD files and saw them there.
-- I was getting worried about where to put new kits. Space was getting scarce, and I was considering deleting old kits. I knew I'd probably never use them and had already relegated them to a "random designers" folder to keep them out of my way . . . but the pack rat in me didn't want to delete them. It was making me a little anxious.
-- I actually got momentarily frustrated one day upon learning that my mom had taken a several videos of my son with her digital camera. I never take any, and Jake's only almost five once, so I should be thrilled that she does this. The videos are hilarious, but they take up absurd amounts of hard drive space. And she takes videos all the time. Where was I going to put all those new videos? More anxiety.  To make matters worse, I was already (subconsciously) cutting back on my own picture taking -- both because I was falling behind in layouts, and suddenly with limited storage space, 400 pictures a month seemed excessive.

I have issues, yes I know.

But as I’ve already said, my new external hard drive solved all these problems. So yay me!

There are other benefits to having an external hard drive that I was already enjoying -- but telling you about them might help convince you to get one.  So here goes. 

Sharing: Taking your external hard drive to someone’s house is a great way to share pictures. Because most computers have USB ports in the front these days, set up is easy. You can get pictures from friends or family who take lots of pictures of your kid, and you can also transfer your pictures to THEIR computer. No worrying about having the time to burn a disk or harassing people to just do it already – stick your external hard drive in your purse on your way to their house (this is easier if you get a portable EHD) and you’re halfway done! (I'm pretty sure my EHD has saved my relationship with my mom, because until I got one? We were making each other crazy with the whole why don’t you ever give me your pictures thing.)

Easy back-up: For normal people, EHDs can be used to back up not only photos, but the other day-to-day files on a computer. For me, I use my two 100 GB external hard drives to quickly back up the new files I put on my big EHD, as well as all my important documents. This way I can procrastinate a bit before I back up to DVR disks. I think the possibility that all three of my EHDs would die at the same time is highly unlikely.  (Although now that I've mentioned it, do you think it's more or less likely to happen?) 


When I bought my first EHD two years ago, it was huge (almost the size of a dinner plate, and four inches high), only 40 GBs, and $80. The next year I bought a small "portable" one with 100 GBs. It was the size of two decks of cards, had over two times the GB storage, and was the same price as the first. (And later that year I bought an additional one because my files were outgrowing the first 100 GBs.)

This year, I got smart. I got a 500 GB, for merely $150.   500 GBs should last me a while.  That's 30 cents a GB. My first one was $2 a GB. Gotta love how with time, the price of a technology gets less and less. (At this rate, I might actually get an iPhone within the next decade!) I knew which brand I wanted, so I went to three store websites (Best Buy, Circuit City, and CompUSA) and compared their products and prices. Doing homework like this before I went into a store to make a purchase kept me from being overwhelmed by my choices. 

One last thought: don't ever depend on ONE data source as your end-all, be-all back-up source! CDs, DVRs, on-line backup, an extra internal drive at yo' mama's house (if she lives nearby) . . . these, along with your EHD, are all devises that can help you preserve your digital collections.

About the author ...
Jen Strange is mama to Jake, a full-time secretary, part-time piano teacher, and obsessive scrapbooker (since her son's birth in 2002.) An avid blogger since 2004, her DigiScrappin' with Jen blog serves as an introduction to digital scrapbooking, while her Stop Piracy blog is a centralized spot for learning about and fighting the piracy of digital scrapbook kits and designs. Jen has been digitally scrapbooking since April 2005; find Jen at www.jenstrange.com and Layouts by the Numbers

Submitted by strangejen