Organizing and Editing Your Photos with Picasa: Visual QuickProject Guide

To safeguard your photos from drive failure, fire, and other catastrophes, Picasa has a Backup Pictures routine that you can use to archive photos to CD, DVD, or another hard drive. Backup Pictures copies the original files, as well as noting any edits you've made in Picasa. Because Backup Pictures also places a restore program (PicasaRestore.exe) on the backup disc or drive, you can also use Backup Pictures to move copies of your files to another PC.

Backups are created as named sets. Each set keeps track of all files that have already been backed up, enabling you to perform incremental backups in which only new and changed files are recorded in subsequent backups.

Choose Tools > Backup Pictures or click the Backup button at the top of the window. The bottom section of the window presents backup options; the left side displays the Folders on Disk list.

On your first backup of a particular set of folders, click the New Set button. The New Backup Set dialog box appears.

Enter a name for the backup set, indicate the backup type (to CD/DVD or to another drive), and specify the file types to back up. (If backing up to a hard disk, click Choose to select the drive.) Click Create to continue.

In the Folders on Disk list (see previous page), click check boxes of all folders to be backed up.

To perform a complete backup, click the Select All button in Section 2. To start over (clearing the check boxes of all selected folders), click Select None.

To create the backup, click the Burn button (to the right of Section 2).

If backing up to a hard drive, the backup begins immediately. If backing up to CD or DVD, insert a blank CD or DVD when prompted and then click Write. (Note that you will be asked to insert a new blank CD or DVD for each backup; you cannot reuse your existing backup discs.)

CD/DVD backup only: When prompted, click the Eject button to complete the backup.