jgordon Loc: Boulder CO

My wife and I just completed a month long vacation in Buenos Aires. Of course, I took lots of photos. But now I need some advice about how to deal with them.

We traveled with a laptop and I was careful to upload each day’s photos to the laptop each evening. Also, following advice from this forum, I used a lot small capacity cards so that I wouldn't lose everything if one of the cards failed. So far, so good.

Now we are home and the photos are all on cards AND on the laptop. I want to transfer them -- in the most efficient way possible -- to my main computer at home so that I can do some work on them with Adobe Elements 11 and integrate them into my basic photo catalog. (While on the road I used Picasa, which was fine for the simple editing I wanted to do before my wife posted some of her photos to her blog.)

My question (which I am a little embarrassed to have to ask) is about the most efficient way to get the photos onto my main home computer. I could plug each card into the machine and upload that way. However, I imagine that there is some way to upload them from the laptop (which has all of them) to my home computer. Am I correct about that? If so, what is the most efficient way to go about that?

Thoughts? Advice? Help?

[I use Windows based computers. The laptop runs Windows 8 and the home computer runs Windows 7.]

Tea8 Loc: Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain.

I presume that you have them on the laptop the way you want them so what I would do is take a flash drive and then copy the file you have them in on the laptop onto the flash drive. Then take the flash drive and copy them from there onto your home computer. That way you don't have to do it card by card again. I use basically this process except that I have a smaller external hard drive that I save to when vacationing so I upload them to that while traveling and keep them in a folder and then I can just copy that folder to my computer when I get home.

JR1 Loc: Tavistock, Devon, UK

You could simply link the laptop and pc via either a broadband connection (router) or a usb cable and network the two.

Would have to be setup, windows will walk you through it though.

GreenReaper

You might be able to use an ethernet cross over cable. I've got one never used it. Just a thought. Using external drive (mentioned in another post I believe) would be the less complicated, plus it would give you redundancy(?).

JR1 Loc: Tavistock, Devon, UK

Totally agree

jgordon Loc: Boulder CO

Thank you all for the thoughts. I will try out the ideas you have suggested.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

when I travel I download to 2 portable HD one is back-up and the other one is what I use to work on then I plug that HD into my computer and download from there

pyrator Loc: Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

If you're main computer and laptop are both using the same router (either via wi fi or cable) then you should be able to see each other. It's easier if they're using same operating system, so you might not need a crossover.
Can you tell us what operating systems you are using for both?
Ah you use windows 7 and 8.
You should be able to use network discovery, create a shared folder on your main pc and then link to that from your laptop.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows7/share-files-with-someone

ebbote Loc: Hockley, Texas

Your pictures will not care if it is windows 7 or 8, they will
transfer without a problem. To me the easiest way is to use
a usb thumb drive, transfer them from the laptop to the usb
drive and usb drive to your PC, it is easy.

Elliern Loc: Myrtle Beach, SC

The quickest and easiest way for me is to copy to a flash drive then from there to your main computer. No additional connection, wiring, etc. quick and simple. Just make sure you have enough room on your flash drive to copy them all at once. Or you could use different flash drives if one won't hold them all.

pyrator Loc: Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

I know people here are saying use a flash or thumb drive which is quick to use for one off situations, but for a longer term solution it's really worth ensuring you can connect your pcs over your home network. I'm guessing you use the internet and have access to a router in your home and can connect to the internet by your pc and laptop. If so then it's really easy to see your laptops documents and photos from the pc and vice versa.

saichiez Loc: Beautiful Central Oregon

My backup system consists of 3 External Hard Drives. Two at home, and one off site.

At some point you are going to have to face the big question... Backups...

Backups are not about reliability of drives. All media and all drives fail at some point. Even the cloud fails when the site goes broke or closes for some reason.

The key to backups is "Redundancy",... the more the better.

Face it now and get at least one good external hard drive. The simplest method for your original question is to COPY the files from your laptop onto the External Drive. Leave them on your laptop if you have substantial free space... that's one backup for the time being.

Copy them from the new external to the Main Computer. Leave them on the External Drive... That's Backup Two.

As long as space is not an issue, leave all the pictures on the Main Computer and continue to build there. Then as needed, COPY files to the External Drive Backup, and to the laptop... until you get a second External Drive.

Forget networking the two computers. That's the quickest way to loss, corruption and Insanity. I know because I have been consulting on networks for over 20 years.

There is no logical reason for networking in a home environment, with the exception of sharing devices such as printers. Otherwise, you have to be rather adept at keeping track of files and folders if you are sharing drives between computers across a network.

Surely some nerd types, geeks and IT people on this site will Pooh Pooh my advice on this.

I know how to do it properly, and I do not use home networking in my own environment. I use External Drives and hook them directly to the computers to Copy, Transfer, and Synchronize them....

Originals on one machine, Two External Drives synched at home, and one External Drive off site. No fancy dedicated backup software.. no encrypted or incremental files. Just images that I can pull individually from any of the computers or drives I have them on.

jgordon Loc: Boulder CO

Thank you again to all who responded and for all the helpful advice.

I finally got up my courage and figured out how to use my home computer network to transfer the photos. It seems to have worked fine.

However, I did this before I read the post by saichiez -- which I found particularly interesting. So, maybe the next step in my budding re-immersion into photography is to accumulate some external hard drives to use as both backup devices and as transfer devices.

Thank you again to all who provided responses. This forum is a great resource, particularly for folks like me who are trying to come to grips with the new realities and challenges of photography in a digital age.