Running out of memory on my laptop

Ok I plan to get the dimage 7i in about a month, I've been using a kodak dx-4900 4mp camera for the last couple of months. I have a dell laptop with a 20gig hdd and I only have about three gigs left! I'm not swimming in money and the laptop is all I have because I can't afford a desktop pc! I do alot of editing on adobe photoshop 7, therfore I need high quility origanal pictures, which means lots of memory usage.

I don't want to sell the laptop because I need it for traveling, I do all of my editing using it (if you haven't already figured that out - only one conputer!). Having said that, I would be very greatfull if you guys have any ideas on what I should be using.

Logan

Get an external CD burner for it.

Burn two CD's for each set of files... keep them in different places in case of fire, flood, etc.
Do not use CD-RW... they are easier damaged.
Hope this helps.

--
Please visit me at:
http://www.caughtintimephotography.com

I think the cheapest solution for you would be to buy an external CD-Writer (which will usually connect to your USB port). I don't know for sure how much they cost, but my guess would be $150 or less.

Or maybe your laptop manufacturer could replace your CD-ROM drive with a CD-Writer, but I doubt it.

Logan Howe said:

Ok I plan to get the dimage 7i in about a month, I've been using a
kodak dx-4900 4mp camera for the last couple of months. I have a
dell laptop with a 20gig hdd and I only have about three gigs left!
I'm not swimming in money and the laptop is all I have because I
can't afford a desktop pc! I do alot of editing on adobe photoshop
7, therfore I need high quility origanal pictures, which means lots
of memory usage.
I don't want to sell the laptop because I need it for traveling, I
do all of my editing using it (if you haven't already figured that
out - only one conputer!). Having said that, I would be very
greatfull if you guys have any ideas on what I should be using.

Logan

Click to expand...

First of all, you are running out of drive space, or disk space, or storage space (not memory). Many people get them mixed up, but it causes confusion.

In any case, you can replace the hard drive in many laptops. You could pull out that 20GB and stick in a 40 or even 60GB. You can pick one of these up for $200 to $250 (check http://www.pricewatch.com ).

Now, I have an IBM laptop with UltraBay2000 slots (two of them, in fact). For $40, I can buy an UltraBay2000 drive adaptor. This would allow be to buy a second hard drive, place it in this adaptor, and plug it into the slot, giving me a second hard drive with plenty of drive space. This would allow me to keep my original one inside, which means I don't have to backup all of my data and re-install my system, etc.

Most IBMs only have one UltraBay2000 slot containing the CDROM, but even then I don't use the CDROM too often, so I could just leave the drive in most of the time.

I don't know if this option is available for your laptop, but replacing the drive almost certainly is.

You can also look into getting an external drive that connects via USB or Firewire. It will usually need a separate power supply, though.

If you do decide you want an external drive, I would look into getting a data vault. There are ones made for digital cameras that allow you to transfer images onto them from your camera (or directly from the CompactFlash card) without your laptop at all. But you can then plug it into your laptop and it shows up as an extra drive.

Note that a USB drive is going to be quite slow for regular use (i.e. image editing directly on the drive). But you could copy them onto your local drive and copy them back when done. You can also get a PCMCIA Firewire adaptor and get one that will connect with Firewire, as that is much quicker.

I was considering this with the CompactFlash adaptor:
http://www.archos.com/lang=en/products/prw_500375.html

Well I must admit that when I bought this dell laptop I went a little overboard, resulting in my current low finances. I say this because I bought an internal CD-R/RW DVD combo drive.

The problem I've been running into is do to the fact that when I want to backup my pictures, I need to span the cds manuly. Do you know of any burning software that will allow me to backup all existing pictures over a series of lets say 10-15 cds?

Thanks

Logan

Logan Howe said:

Do you
know of any burning software that will allow me to backup all
existing pictures over a series of lets say 10-15 cds?

Click to expand...

Let me know if you find anything... I'm going to write one of these for Linux pretty soon... I can pick up ideas from an existing one maybe.

I understand your dilemma, though... that is why I'm writing such a program

Logan,

There are several issues at stake here. The primary one being data back up. While currently it sounds like you are using your hard drive for storage, you should really consider offloading your user created files, that includes any documents, spreadsheets, and of course picture files to optical storage......not magnetic which is what your hard drive is. Depending on how new your laptop is, you may have firewire connectivity, allowing you to have an external CD burner AND/OR a second hard drive depending on the work you do. You mentioned traveling and editing on your laptop, so the second hard drive would be handy for having all your files with you at all times. The CD burner would allow you to back up all user created files for safe storage (I have a fire proof safe in home, and I also keep backups in a safe deposit box at the bank.....better safe than sorry!).

Memory? You could have memory issues if you are opening up multiple files in Photoshop, but it doesn't sound like that's what you meant.

Editing on the laptop? The highest resolution screens are only 1600x1200...how are you able to edit effectively?

Brent

Logan Howe said:

Ok I plan to get the dimage 7i in about a month, I've been using a
kodak dx-4900 4mp camera for the last couple of months. I have a
dell laptop with a 20gig hdd and I only have about three gigs left!
I'm not swimming in money and the laptop is all I have because I
can't afford a desktop pc! I do alot of editing on adobe photoshop
7, therfore I need high quility origanal pictures, which means lots
of memory usage.
I don't want to sell the laptop because I need it for traveling, I
do all of my editing using it (if you haven't already figured that
out - only one conputer!). Having said that, I would be very
greatfull if you guys have any ideas on what I should be using.

Logan

Click to expand...

--
http://www.pbase.com/brivers

Brivers said:

Editing on the laptop? The highest resolution screens are only
1600x1200...how are you able to edit effectively?

Click to expand...

I can't imagine what you use! I only have 1600x1200 on each of my 19" monitors (dual-head) at work... I thought that was all anybody would ever need!

Kirk Bauer said:

Note that a USB drive is going to be quite slow for regular use
(i.e. image editing directly on the drive). But you could copy
them onto your local drive and copy them back when done. You can
also get a PCMCIA Firewire adaptor and get one that will connect
with Firewire, as that is much quicker.

Click to expand...

First of all let me say that I have a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card for my laptop and a DVD/CD-RW drive in my moduler bay. I use the CD drive quite a bit so the external drive conected via USB 2.0 would preferable. I do beleive that the USB 2.0 is a little faster then firewire, with the USB 2.0 clocking in at 480mbps.
I'm thinking of something more long term then 60gigs maybe around 120gbs.
Logan

Logan Howe said:

First of all let me say that I have a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card for my
laptop and a DVD/CD-RW drive in my moduler bay.

Click to expand...

I was thinking that something with a 20GB drive wouldn't have USB 2.0... oops, yeah, USB2.0 is faster than firewire.

Logan Howe said:

I use the CD drive
quite a bit so the external drive conected via USB 2.0 would
preferable.

Click to expand...

I wonder what you use it for... I also have a CDROM/CDR/DVDROM combo drive that only gets used about once per month.

Logan Howe said:

maybe around 120gbs.

Click to expand...

A laptop is definitely out at that size, but an external USB2.0 drive would use regular-sized drives and 120GB is not much there.

If you can't find one that big, consider finding a USB drive without the actual drive in it, and then buying your own 120GB drive.

Brivers said:

Memory? You could have memory issues if you are opening up
multiple files in Photoshop, but it doesn't sound like that's what
you meant.

Click to expand...

Sorry about my missuse of the computer lingo. I always thought of memory as hdd space, ram as random access memory - only available while there is power.

Brivers said:

Editing on the laptop? The highest resolution screens are only
1600x1200...how are you able to edit effectively?

Click to expand...

I don't have any idea while only having 1600x1200 would hinder my editing capabilities, because I zoom in thus spreading out the photos pixels.

Logan

Logan Howe said:

I'm thinking of something more long term then 60gigs maybe around
120gbs.

Click to expand...

Oh, and definitely start burning CDs as others have suggested in addition to buying more drive space (or instead of?). People think hard drives are very reliable but they do fail quite often.

Right now I back up all of my pictures daily onto a second hard drive and keep one week's worth (this is all automatic). But I just got my 7Hi, and the files are much bigger than my old 2MP camera

Kirk Bauer said:

Kirk Bauer said:

First of all let me say that I have a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card for my
laptop and a DVD/CD-RW drive in my moduler bay.

Click to expand...

I was thinking that something with a 20GB drive wouldn't have USB
2.0... oops, yeah, USB2.0 is faster than firewire.

Click to expand...

My USB 2.0 is a PCMCIA card, which means that I put it in the slots on the side of my laptop. I swap between the modem/lan card and the 2.0 card, I hardly every use the USB 2.0 card because I don't have any thing demanding speed at the moment. I have a four port USB hub pluged into the built-in USB 1.1 port on the laptop.

Kirk Bauer said:

Kirk Bauer said:

I use the CD drive
quite a bit so the external drive conected via USB 2.0 would
preferable.

Click to expand...

I wonder what you use it for... I also have a CDROM/CDR/DVDROM
combo drive that only gets used about once per month.

Click to expand...

I use it for DVD videos, buring copies of cds, games (I'm only 17), I try to back up my computer quite frequently do to having it crash at the begining of 2002 losing so great photos, and many others need I list them all?

Logan

Last time I needed to do this, I just made multiple-volume tar archives... 700 MB each and burned them each on one CD. Multi-volume tars are great because you CAN extract a single volume independently...

The disadvantage is that its rather cumbersome to browse or pull out individual files.

Kirk Bauer said:

Kirk Bauer said:

Do you
know of any burning software that will allow me to backup all
existing pictures over a series of lets say 10-15 cds?

Click to expand...

Let me know if you find anything... I'm going to write one of these
for Linux pretty soon... I can pick up ideas from an existing one
maybe.

I understand your dilemma, though... that is why I'm writing such a
program

Click to expand...

Kirk,

You're right, I am using 1600x1200, I meant to say 1280x780 as many laptops offer, but I find the laptop hard to use given the resolution compared to a smaller dot pitch on a CRT monitor. I have a laptop with an ultra 1600x1200 resolution, and it doesn't compare to my Hitachi CRT.

Brent

Kirk Bauer said:

Kirk Bauer said:

Editing on the laptop? The highest resolution screens are only
1600x1200...how are you able to edit effectively?

Click to expand...

I can't imagine what you use! I only have 1600x1200 on each of my
19" monitors (dual-head) at work... I thought that was all anybody
would ever need!

Click to expand...

--
http://www.pbase.com/brivers

Kirk Bauer said:

Kirk Bauer said:

I'm thinking of something more long term then 60gigs maybe around
120gbs.

Click to expand...

Oh, and definitely start burning CDs as others have suggested in
addition to buying more drive space (or instead of?). People think
hard drives are very reliable but they do fail quite often.

Right now I back up all of my pictures daily onto a second hard
drive and keep one week's worth (this is all automatic). But I
just got my 7Hi, and the files are much bigger than my old 2MP
camera

Click to expand...

OK so maybe I didn't tell the full story to begin with. I have a very old computer running windows 98, I managed to get it networked with my laptop and keep it in the closet. I copy files over to it about every 1-2 weeks, other then that the win98 computer is completly worthless. oh by the way it has a 10gb, a 14bg for backup purposes then the os runs off of a 2.2gb drive. Resulting in no CD rom of floppy disk.

My problem here is that it is not portable, so when I go someplace I'd be stuck without all my pics - 20gigs dosen't go very far any more.

CDs would be a hassle to use for any thing other then back-up purposes, because I'm constantl'y learnig somthing new in adobe and going back to retouch some old picture. If you get my drift.

Logan

Vinay Pai said:

Last time I needed to do this, I just made multiple-volume tar
archives... 700 MB each and burned them each on one CD.
Multi-volume tars are great because you CAN extract a single volume
independently...

The disadvantage is that its rather cumbersome to browse or pull
out individual files.

Click to expand...

This is the reason I want to make something better. My particular problem is that I like to organize picture independent of when they were taken (in many cases), so I'll stick pictures in with pictures I took a year ago.

So, this script will keep a catalog of which ones have been backed up and on which CDs. I can run it, and it will look for any images that have not been placed on an CDs. It will then tell me the total size. When I decide it is full enough (or when the program decides the disc is completely full) I burn the CD. It will prepare the CD for me, including the cumulative catalog (filename, disc it is on, and the description which I already store in the JPEG header).

So, I would run it once a week and I would get an email telling me how much data is waiting to be written. I then burn the CD and it tells me which unique ID to use for the disc. It shouldn't take too long, but I'm finishing up a book right now, so I have to wait

My laptop is a TFT active Matrix set at 1024 by 728

Logan

Logan Howe said:

I use it for DVD videos, buring copies of cds, games (I'm only 17),

Click to expand...

Enjoy the games while you can. I love games and used to play them all the time. I literally own over 500 console games (Nintendo up to PS2) but haven't played a single one in about nine months (and I'm only 25!).

Since you often use your laptop as your desktop, an external drive would be great anyways... I was just curious as I never use my CDROM drive.

Logan Howe said:

OK so maybe I didn't tell the full story to begin with. I have a
very old computer running windows 98, I managed to get it networked
with my laptop and keep it in the closet. I copy files over to it
about every 1-2 weeks, other then that the win98 computer is
completly worthless. oh by the way it has a 10gb, a 14bg for backup
purposes then the os runs off of a 2.2gb drive.

Click to expand...

In this case, I have a completely different option. Buy that 160GB drive and stick it in your desktop system. Rotate pictures onto that drive that you don't need to actually have with you at all times. That still gives you a fully portable 20GB drive and a 160GB drive when you are local. It would be pretty cheap too.

If you are good with computers and want to turn that worthless win98 system into something useful, stick Linux on it. You can do anything you want with it then.