mcmm Loc: Kansas

I need advice. I am working on photographs that I will be using for our school slideshow. This is what I need help with. I am taking various photos of around 300 kids. I take the photos off my camera and save them on my school laptop. This is where I am having issues. I do not want to take my school laptop home every day so I am transporting photos back and forth using an external hard drive. At this point I still need to keep the classes separated into folders. Would it be better to edit the photos on my external drive instead of editing them, saving them to my computer and then copying them back to my laptop at school? At times I find myself in a fog because I am not sure what I have transported back and forth, thus wondering if I only worked from my external HD would be a better solution. I do not have cloud storage so that is not an option.

alfeng Loc: Out where the West commences ...

Unless you are referring to your SD card as an 'external drive, I think that simply putting the SD card in a baggie (to more readily keep track of it!) might/could-or-would be an even easier method of transporting the images than lugging the external drive to-and-fro.

orrie smith Loc: Kansas

your external hd will work just as your internal hd. so, if you put your folders on your external hd, take the drive home and edit the photos and save the edited photos on the external hd, you just need to plug the external hd into your laptop and drag the edited folders back onto your laptop. if the external hd becomes a burden to transport, you could do the same thing with flash drives.

mcmm Loc: Kansas

I am using an external hard drive not my SD card.

mcmm Loc: Kansas

Perfect. I wasn't sure if I would create a problem by editing the pictures directly on my external hard drive or not.

alfeng Loc: Out where the West commences ...

FWIW ...

MY point was just that you could use ANY portable storage device which is more/most convenient for you.

FYI. In case you don't already know, an image which is on an SD card can be edited & re-saved ...

As with a file on ANY device, if you don't want to modify the original, then save the edited image with a new name.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

I'd invest in a 32GB USB flash drive. Work from that, backing up to your main computer for safety.

alandg46 Loc: Boerne, Texas

Or even a 128 gig. They're less than $30 bucks.

OnDSnap Loc: NE New Jersey

You don't mention what you edit in, which may make a difference in the transfer such as to LR and what to transfer, files, catalog etc...or if you are using JPGS, RAW file / DNG or camera specific with side cars...

If it's just a matter of transferring and you must keep them on a computer for editing... Keep each class in a sub folder and those within a main School-2016 folder. Then just drag and drop the entire School folder to either a thumb drive or a pocket size external 500gb. Before putting them back on school laptop, you have a couple choices, whether or not you are putting the folder back to it's original location, It will ask if you want to leave original and create a copy or replace with incoming, Personally I would delete old folder/files then drag and drop the school folder back onto laptop, do the same going the other way. Clear the external or thumb drive and home computer before going > laptop to home. BTW, I would make a Back Up prior to each time I did a transfer of that size.
Better yet, I would just keep them on a 500gb 3"x 5" http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1140711-REG/wd_wdbbkd0020bbk_nesn_2tb_my_passport_ultra.html
external drive and work from that drive especially if this is a one time thing. When your done burn the pictures to disk, and give them to the school. And you keep the drive for another day.

joer Loc: Colorado/Illinois

I agree with the suggestions for using a USB flash drive.

TerryA Loc: Williamsburg, VA

If you're using a Windows machine, you may also want to look at Microsoft SyncToy, free from Microsoft, to keep the files on the internal and external drives coordinated.

FrumCA

And don't forget to backup your photos before you do any transferring, etc.

mcmm Loc: Kansas

Thank you all for your suggestions. I am using my 1TB Passport to move photos from home to school and back. Somewhere over the past few years I thought I read that you shouldn't work directly from the external drive because it could burn it up. Have no idea where I read that so that was my main concern. I was afraid if I worked from it that I might lose everything (I know that is always possible so I do make a backup every day). What I've been trying to do is remember what folders I have made changes to and then just add those changes to those folders. I know I should be writing those things down so I would know for sure but I am lazy and am not doing that step! I was beginning to confuse myself trying to remember all of those changes and what needed to be copied and going which way, home to school or school to home. I do have all of the original photos backed up and have just created folders and copied the photos I wanted to work with so I would always have the originals. Sounds like the easiest and least confusing option would be to just copy all folders each time I have worked on them so I don't miss any of the changes. I just didn't want to burn my external drive up from working directly from it.
I am using Lightroom 4.4 and Photoshop 7 to edit my photos.

orrie smith Loc: Kansas

one easy way to know which have been edited is to make an additional folder titled with the same title you were using, but add the word edited, example, folder named "students 4-9-16" plus added folder named "students 4-9-16 edited". that way you have the originals plus an edited folder that is easily identified.

Toby

AMEN