Archive photos to an external hard drive

Introduction

Portable photo storage

There are a number of benefits to storing your digital photos on an external hard drive:

Portable—Connect your external drive to any computer for an easy way to bring all your pictures with you when visiting friends and family. Look for a lightweight option like the HP 500GB Pocket Media Drive for ultimate portability.

Simple—Just connect an external drive to your PC via a USB cord or PC media bay and transfer your files.

Large storage capacity—External hard drives have a higher storage capacity than discs, perfect for archiving large batches of photos. If you opt for a drive with a large capacity, you could even archive everything on your computer—not just your pictures.

Long-lasting—External drives last longer than traditional computer hard drives, typically because they're not constantly running like a PC's hard drive. So you can rely on photo storage for many years to come.

Automated backup—Synchronize your external drive with your computer so that every time you upload photos to your PC, they will be backed up on your hard drive as well.

Tips for using your external hard drive

Follow these tips for a longer-lasting hard drive that offers premium performance.

• Be gentle! Hard drives can become damaged if dropped or knocked against a hard surface.
  
• Do not plug or unplug your external drive from your PC while transferring photos or other data.
  
• Store at room temperature, and keep away from heat sources.
  
• If you keep your external drive in storage—and not connected to your computer—you'll want to connect it to a PC every few months to ensure it's working properly.
  
• To keep track of your stored photos, label your external drive with its content and last date of backup.
  
• Use a backup storage method, like a second external drive or a copy of your photo collection on disc. It's always possible for an external drive—or any other photo storage method—to fail.

Choose an external drive

HP storage solutions come in a variety of sizes and offer storage capacity up to 1TB (terabytes), which is roughly equal to 1000GB (gigabytes).

Pocket drives

• Portable, high-speed HP pocket drives can be used alone or connected to a PC via the included USB cable.
  
• You can also save space by sliding it into the chassis slot of select HP Pavilion PCs that feature pocket media drive bays. (HP Pavilion Elite Series PCs offer bays for both pocket drives and personal media drives.)
• Store 59,000 photos, 74,000 songs, or 205 hours of video¹ on the wallet-size 320GB Pocket Media Drive. Get a handy carrying case for ultimate portability.

Personal media drives

• Ideal for archiving larger files, HP personal media drives have the potential to store your entire digital photo collection.
• They connect to your computer with a USB cable, or can be inserted into the personal media drive bay included on select HP desktop PCs.

Learn more

• Find additional information and tips for archiving digital photos, including the various ways to store your images.
  
• Explore the options for archiving your photo prints and find a method that works best for you.
  
• Get tips to archive your photos online using the photo-sharing site, Snapfish.