how and where else can i store all my digital picks from my laptop? what sort of cd/dvd should i use?

Answer 1

You've received two good answers already.

Laptops, do to their transportability- tend to get damaged or stolen more often than desktop machines. Think of what would happen to you if you lost your laptop, or the hard drive crashed?

Best to get an external hard drive. They even come with auto-backup programs to duplicate all your files, either at the push of a button, or automatically every night.

Just make sure to get one that has the right kind of high speed interface- usually a USB2 or Firewire. You can get a huge, high quality 250mb drive for sub $150.

Answer 2

I use an external hard drive and I periodically synchronize my entire system using Norton Ghost. this way I have a full backup of everything: pictures, music collection, documents, email and bookmarks, all my applications and games that I've configured just so, and the entire OS. Call me paranoid, but I've had a hard drive die on me before. With a laptop, I suppose there's also a higher probability of theft.
I recently added a 200GB internal drive, but I don't see the need for an additional backup drive just yet.
For long term storage, keep in mind that CDs and DVDs (and even hard drives) are not permanent. It's a good idea to copy everything to fresh disks every year or two.

Answer 3

there are a few ways to store pictures:
1. DVDs as backup
2. CDs as backup
3. external hard disk drive

choose either one, but DVD should do the trick since it comes with fairly large sizes depending on the type of the DVD that is compatible with your burner. you could get a stack of 4.8gb dvds and that should last you long. remember well to take care of them as they are rather fragile too.