How to Backup Your Pictures with Picasa

How to Backup Your Pictures with Picasa

Picasa 2 includes a backup feature which will help you to keep your photos safe from disaster like a hard drive crash or stolen computer. Most computers these days have a DVD burner, so you can use writable DVDs to back up your pictures rather inexpensively.
If you have a lot of pictures, however, you may want to consider getting an external hard drive for your pictures backup as it will make the process much quicker.

DVDs still work well for a secondary level of protection, even if you backup to an external hard drive. They can be stored easily in a separate location in case of fire or other natural disaster. Of course, you can also use CDs for backup, but most likely it is going to require a whole pile of discs.

Before you begin, it is a good idea to make sure you Picasa program is up to date. Go to Help > Check for Updates Online. If any updates are found, install them.

If there are no updates you will get a message saying so, and you can continue to the backup process.

Choose the Recordable Drive

Go to Tools > Backup Pictures.
If you have more than one recordable drive in your computer, like I do, you may see this screen asking you to choose which drive you would like to use. If it is a choice between a CD and DVD drive, choose the DVD because it will require fewer discs. Otherwise just choose the faster or preferred drive. Make your choice and click OK.

Picasa Backup Wizard

Now you will see the backup wizards at the bottom of the Picasa window, showing step 1 and step 2. As you can read under step 1, Picasa will keep track of which files have been backed up in the past so the next time you do a backup, it will only show you the new and changed files since the last time you did a backup.

Edit the Backup Set for Backup to CD or DVD

You can go with the default backup set "My Backup Set" if you plan to backup to CD or DVD. Click "Edit Set" to see what options are selected for the backup. As you can, see, the backup type is set to CD or DVD and cannot be changed. However, you can change the settings for which files will be included in the backup:

• All file types will include everything.
• All pictures will include graphic formats but not video formats. Movies can be very large files, so this can be useful if you don't have enough blank disks to store your movies. However, if you choose it, be aware that your movies and video clips are at risk.

• Only JPEGs with Camera Information will exclude any non-camera graphics such as clip art, wallpaper, downloaded images, video clips, scanned pictures, and anything else that does not contain camera EXIF information. That means if you edited some photos in such a way that camera information was not preserved, they won't be included in the backup if you choose this option. This is useful if you only want to include digital photos that have been taken with a digital camera.

Click Change to dismiss the options screen after you have made your choices.
If you will be using CDs or DVDs for your backup, you can skip ahead to page 6.

If you wish to backup to an secondary hard drive, removable drive, or network location, you will need to make a new backup set, so continue on to page 5.

Edit the Backup Set for Backup to Another Drive

If you will be backing up to a removable drive, make sure it is connected now.

1. Click New Set.
2. Type a name for the backup set.
3. Choose the disk-to-disk option and click choose to select the backup location.
4. Select which files you'd like backed up based on the information on the previous page of this tutorial. Make sure this is a different drive from the one where you pictures are stored or they will not be protected.

1. Click Create to create the backup set.

The backup wizard will show the new backup set as selected.

Choose Folders and Albums to Back Up

Under step 2 in the backup wizard in Picasa, you are prompted to choose which folders and albums to backup.
If it is your first time making a backup, you will probably want to backup everything, so click "Select All."

You'll notice in the Library list on the left side of the screen, all your folders and albums will have a checkmark beside them. If for some reason, you want to exclude selected folders or albums, you can uncheck them in the library list.

Ensure You Have the Space for the Backup

As you select and deselect files and folders, the blue line above the backup wizard will show you exactly how many folders and files you have chosen and how much space they will require, including the number of CDs or DVDs required if you are backing up to recordable discs.
If you don't have enough space or discs for the full backup, you must deselect folders or change the backup options until you can make it fit.

The next time you do a backup, the items you excluded will be available to choose again so you can back them up when you get more discs or a larger hard drive.

Start the Backup Process

When you are ready to begin the backup process, click the button with the green checkmark. The button will be labeled "backup" if you are backing up to another hard drive. It will be labeled "burn" if you are backing up to CD or DVD.
Remember to insert a blank disc in your CD or DVD burner before clicking the burn button.

Picasa will show the progress of the backup in a small pop-out at the right side of the screen.

If you need to, you can cancel the backup by clicking on it.

When the backup completes, the backup location will open in an Explorer window. You'll see a top level folder containing all your pictures with the folder structure and file names preserved. If you ever loose an individual file, you can retrieve it by browsing this folder.
If you need to recover all your photos, open the PicasaRestore.exe file. A dialog will ask if you want to restore the files back to the original locations, or to a different folder.

When you click next, a dialog will appear showing the list of files to be restores. Double clicking on a row in the liist will open the backup copy of that folder.
Click restore to recover all the files.