Saving ??

**mymakes** · November 15th, 2009

Can you save on disks? If so how? I recently lost everything on my computer and want to back up. been using floppy but hard to find in my little town.

**daisymousse** · November 15th, 2009

no i find the hourly hunt and the free hourly, but not format for download.my last download is the celtic and the fsl sport ornaments.
And after this nothing.

sorry for my english

Daisymousse from Belgium

**quilt-silly** · November 15th, 2009

Yes, the last five computers that we've bought don't even have floppy disk drives. Finding floppies at a good price, you can probably best do at Office Depot online - sign up for their emails they'll send you coupons every so often, good for 20% off or free shipping, etc. The Office Depot brand floppies are fine.

Don't you have a CD or DVD writer on your computer? If you do, you're going to get way more files onto a CD than a floppy. I think all of my embroidery files will fit on one CD. You can buy external DVD writers that plug into a USB port and back up everything on your system with it.

External hard drives are also really cheap nowadays - and that would be my preference - I would buy one of those and hook it up. You can set up the directory system the way that you want it and put an end to searching through stacks of floppies. If you have a program that gives you thumbnail views of the files as you're browsing your folders, finding what you need is much easier, still.

Even a very small external drive will save a LOT of embroidery files, if that's all you want to back up. You can find those super cheap on eBay.

And this reminds me that I bought a 300GB internal hard drive last year - or was it two years ago?

- and I still haven't put it in. I used to just jump at the chance to upgrade or augment hardware. But, I'm lazy these days - I want to turn my computer on and have it do everything that I want it to do without my having to mess with any of it.

Hope that helps!
Elizabeth

**sharong** · November 15th, 2009

Floppys will soon be gone forever I think. It is best to use a Cd but don't fill it completely full. When I fill them to the limit it is just to hard to go through everything.

**mymakes** · November 15th, 2009

I know this sounds stupid but could some one give me steps and what cds to buy. I can sew but not computer. thanks for all the help!!

**teddy_rn** · November 15th, 2009

Personally I got a good scare and went with the on-line service www.carbonite.com
I no longer bother with CD's because the few times that I did I had issues; I use the little USB flash drives because they are small and hold tons more info. I have a friend who down loads tons and when we get together we each show up with a flash drive, swap info and then I load it on my computer for the Carbonite to back up and save.

**Angicrafter** · November 15th, 2009

I got a one terrabit external hard drive and I just dump everything on it a couple of times a month and then I organize them when I have time. OK so maybe I dont organize them as much as I should I but I have good intentions ! LOL

**teddy_rn** · November 15th, 2009

Originally Posted by Angicrafter

I got a one terrabit external hard drive and I just dump everything on it a couple of times a month and then I organize them when I have time. OK so maybe I dont organize them as much as I should I but I have good intentions ! LOL

Hey Angie have you ever heard the Randy Travis song "the road to h*** is paved with good intentions"? I swear this is the theme of my life most of the time!!

**Angicrafter** · November 15th, 2009

lol no I have not heard the song but I think I resemble that remark ! LOL

**quilt-silly** · November 15th, 2009

I *definitely* resemble that remark.

And I like Randy Travis, too.

A flash drive would be a good option, too - I never think to do that, though.

This is amazing that we're talking about terabyte drives. My first computer had a 1.1GB hard drive and 64Mb of memory! A 28K modem! (that only got 14.4) LOL!

My CELL PHONE now has more storage and faster web and email transfer than my first computer! And it takes better pictures - and movies with sound! - than my first digital camera.

mymakes, it would be really hard to tell you how to manage your storage without knowing your hardware & software and exactly what you want to do with it, in the end.

Do you have someone nearby who knows your system? Maybe someone who can look at what you want to do and figure out how to use your system to do it? Or what to buy in order to make your system do what you want it to?

If you have a CD or DVD writer, there isn't a lot of difference between the high-end and the generic Office Depot or Fry's brands except price. But for instance with a DVD writer, you have to know what type of media it will write to. The newest ones will write to any blank CD or DVD disk, but the earlier ones will only write to specific types. It gets complicated sometimes, which is why you need someone to take a look at your system and figure out what you need it to do.

In general, I think the easiest fix would be to buy a USB external hard drive. It shows up just like your C: drive in Windows Explorer (it will probably be named E: or F: or G: - etc) and you can just start piling it full of folders, which you can then fill with designs.

Most of the time, any drive on your computer that isn't "C:" is unaffected by any virus or problem with the operating system. After you recover from the virus or restore the operating system, everything you put on that external drive will be right where it was, untouched. In fact, you can plug the drive into almost any other PC and all your files will be accessible to you.

I'm sorry I can't help you much, long distance.

I hope you have someone close who can jump in and help you get it figured out.

Good luck!
Elizabeth

**la_cole** · November 16th, 2009

Originally Posted by teddy_rn

Personally I got a good scare and went with the on-line service www.carbonite.com
I no longer bother with CD's because the few times that I did I had issues; I use the little USB flash drives because they are small and hold tons more info. I have a friend who down loads tons and when we get together we each show up with a flash drive, swap info and then I load it on my computer for the Carbonite to back up and save.

Teddy_rn, please remember that sharing downloads is a big NO NO!

**dorie** · November 16th, 2009

My hubby got me an enternal hard drive just for my embroidery designs. But I also have them either on a flash drive or cd's. I have a friend who lost everything on her external hard drive so I am not taking chances. I have had some cd's that will tell me they are corrupt and won't open but I have this little free program called ISO buster and so far it has worked retreiving everthing off of the cd's that were damaged so just re-make them.

**lmtaylor6** · November 16th, 2009

I agree with the flash drive....mostly. It can be portable or used on other computers. I have my main laptop in my livingroom which is where I surf and download. When I go to embroider, I just pop my flash drive in one of my sewing room laptops, (depending on which machine I will be using, I have two laptop and two EM for sewing) and I just do what I need to to....
Then if your flash gets full....you can transfer to a cd

**rajanip** · November 18th, 2009

I got Different Ideas on storing the designs from all the scraps here. sounds great. I would like to share my idea too. I have 2 External hard drives, 1 dedicated for designs.. one for everything.. there is one more way, try to get GMAIL or any mailing accounts, they(gmail) r giving plenty of storage space, you can zip all your designs and upload to that. so you can access them anywhere in the world and Hazel free from loosing it from External drives/CDs or any media. This is my suggestion , Since I am also working in Software industry. Any external media is good to store safely for 5 - 6 years. After that is merely luck your data is safe. So Enjoy storing your designs safely.