Ken, I do it somewhat differently.

I use an Olympus camera and their auto file naming protocol is such that from the file name you can determine the date is was recorded. So, P4120012 was shot April 12th and the last 4 digits are a continuing numerical advancing sequence that increments by 1 for each picture on the card. The last four digits increment, the date changes. So, if the above example was the last picture taken that day, the next picture will show the first 3 numbers as the next date and the last 4 incremented, such as P4130013, and so on.

While the software that comes with cameras does include a routine that will present some arbitrary folder in 'My Pictures' to offload them from the camera, I use a separate partition on my drive for all my pictures and offload them manually. I assign a folder for each year, with 12 subfolders for each month, and then subfolders for each day.

I try to remember to back up ALL my pictures to DVD once a month or so and just realize I haven't exactly been too diligent at doing that of late.

I use a program for viewing images called ACDSee. It allows you to ascribe various categories to each picture, as well as a description which can be used to perform searches and limit selections.

I only keep one copy of the picture on my hard drive, but the older the picture gets, the more back-ups I will have of it since it will be on every back-up DVD I would have done since it as first stored.

hey pete ...

you dont mention if you add the name of the hosta ... unless i missed it...

nor how you search a particular name ... as hard drives grow in gigs.. a simple windows search can get into 10 minutes .... hence my use of one single file ..

in theory.. as i understand your system .. you could have delta dawn .. in 4 folders under 4 different days .. and differing months.. etc ...

please explain .. as simply as possible.. about hard drive partitioning.. and why that is good for your pix .. thanks

ken

Ken, I actually have 2 physical hard drives in my computer, each formatted and partitioned into logical drives. Wikipedia says the following about it:

Purposes for Partitioning

* Separation of the operating system files from user files

* Having an area for operating system virtual memory swapping/paging

* Keeping frequently used programs and data near each other.

* Having cache and log files separate from other files. These can change size dynamically and rapidly, potentially making a file system full.

* Use of multi-booting setups, which allow users to have more than one operating system on a single computer. For example, one could install Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows or others on different partitions of the same hard disk and have a choice of booting into any operating system (supported by the hardware) at power-up.

* Protecting or isolating files, to make it easier to recover a corrupted file system or operating system installation. If one partition is corrupted, none of the other file systems are affected, and the drive's data may still be salvageable. Having a separate partition for read-only data also reduces the chances of the file system on this partition becoming corrupted.

* Raising overall computer performance on systems where smaller file systems are more efficient. For instance, large hard drives with only one NTFS file system typically have a very large sequentially-accessed Master File Table (MFT) and it generally takes more time to read this MFT than the smaller MFTs of smaller partitions.

Also, ACDSee does the following:

Get organized with ACDSee

With ACDSee, organize the way that works best for you. Organize your Windows® file folders, add keywords and ratings, edit your metadata, and create your own categories. Assign images to as many categories as you like without duplicating files.

NEW! Use multi-word keywords like ÂTrip to Mexico to make finding images even easier.

So, while the file name stays as it was first assigned by the camera, through the use of keywords and categories you can perform easy searches. And yes, I do add the cultivar's name as a keyword and may add more than one to make it show up in more than just a search for its name only. If for example I want to search for pictures of Revolution unfurling I can quite easily do that.

Depending on the quantity of pix you have for a single name, you may want to make folders for those pix. For example, you have 25 Delta Dawn pix. You would put all of these in a folder named "Delta Dawn." That would allow for less scrolling. For frost or toads, you could have separate folders for those. Singles could remain in the "top" folder until you have more of that type. I find folders make finding things a lot easier.

Hope that helps.

Jen