I am having trouble with my old computer and have a load of photographs that i dont want to lose.?

Question

I have tried putting them on disc, but it just keeps telling me to load a disc when there is already one there. i have tried a floppy disc but that tells me that it is not formatted, although on the outside it says it is formatted. I dont want to lose them as they are holiday photographs, would love some advice if possible.

Answer 1

Depends how technically minded you are Anne...and how OLD your PC is....if it has USB ports you could try downloading your pics to a flash drive....slot it in the USB port and your operating system should detect it and recognise it as a sort of EXTERNAL hard drive...and they are cheap enough.

You could also add a second internal hard drive and copy stuff across to that until your problem is resolved.

You didnt say whether your PC can actually read any floppy discs... is the A: drive ok? Maybe its past its sell by and needs replacing.....again this is easy enough too.

Have you also tried formatting your floppy discs? even though they state they are formatted maybe they were formatted with a different system to the one you use. Put a disc in, try right clicking on the a: drive icon and select format then try loading your pics...its worth a go.

Answer 2

The box may tell you that the floppy is formatted, but is it formatted in a representation that your computer will understand?

Go in to 'my computer' pop the floppy in to the drive and then click on 'format'. Don't use the 'quick erase' option, this will just clean up what you had on the disk.

I have also had a similar problem with the computer at work telling me that I had to load a disk when there was already one there. The solution with that computer seemed to be to take the disk out and then the computer would tell me that I had ejected the disk before the files were written to the CD! When I put the disk back in, it would then write to the CD.

I have to say that although I have never had this problem at home, my home computer has two CD drives and the one at work has only one. I have to say that I have no idea if this has anything to do with the problem - could be that I was just giving it the wrong instructions!

Answer 3

Try Removable storage or an on-line back-up. Also, (You may however learn this the hard way like i did), get into a routine of backing up your files every 1/2 months (when your computer is running normally). I usually routinely backup the following:

- Photos
- Excel Spreadsheets / Word Docs
- Any design / graphics I've done
- Installation files I've downloaded (so you can re-install progs in the future)

Answer 4

It's sound like you need to back them up to a different hard drive.

There are two ways to install a hard drive..

1. as a slave drive. This method has you connect the hard drive on the same ide ribbon as your 1st hard drive. You need to adjust the jumpers on the back of your old hard drive to master and the new hard drive to slave.. Then when you are in windows you can format the new hard drive and copy all of your photos to the new hard drive.

2. as a secondary master. If your motherboard has a second ide slot (your not working CD drive is probably on it) connect your new drive to the open slot and format the drive and copy your files to it.

If your sole purpose is to back up the photos you don't even need to make the new hard drive a permanent fixture in the old computer. Just connect the cables and have the drive sitting on the table next to your case while you back up the photos... After completing you can disconnect the drive and store it for later use or put it in a new computer.

Steps (w pics) on adding a second hard drive.

http://compreviews.about.com/od/tutorials/ss/DIYSecHD.htm

Cost of a new hard drive...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144122

Answer 5

The best thing to do is to buy a external hard disk, they cost about 50 pounds for a 160 gig. Because it is a usb drive it should work fine, anyway Plug & play.
Copy all neccesary files to your new drive, once completed try formatting your system and install a clean windows,
It seems that you OS is heavily corrupted.
You gain a new hard drive
plus a clean system to work with.
Forget about technician, coz repairs couldd robbed you at least a new portable hard drive!!!!

Answer 6

Take it to a PC repair shop. My old computer crashed and wouldn't even switch on, but they retrieved all of the files from my computer and gave them to me on a disc. I think it cost about £40, so worth doing if you love the pics so much.

Alternatively, you could try emailing them to a hotmail / internet email account which you can then access from another computer and save them onto a disc from there.

Answer 7

You could have a problem with your optical drive or more likely you need to purchase better quality cd-r or dvd-r blanks- don't bother with floppies
Try Bigpockets
http://www.bigpockets.co.uk/

some options
1) if your pc has USB or Firewire, get an external hard drive and transfer them
2) store them on the web either with dedicated photo sites such as Flickr, Photobucket or use a file storage site such as XDrive (5gb free) or BTVault (2gb free) or Orbit (1gb free) or Diino standard (2gb free) - that's 10gb free for a start!

http://www.xdrive.com/
http://www.btdigitalvault.bt.com/index.html
http://www.orbitfiles.com/
http://www.diino.com/online-storage.html
http://www.flickr.com/

Answer 8

Perhaps your computer won't download, mine didn't.

I had to buy a small machine that links to the computer, you put disc in there & add photos that way.

Pc world will help with this.

Lesley

Not cheap but well worth it & a good idea for a present.

Answer 9

you could try sonic record now software which might be on your computer and not the direct approach like you have been doing, it might just be called record now on older PC's,,,,put a blank CD-ROM in the disk tray and then start the record now program, choose the photo's you want to save and any important files and just let the software do its job,, don't try floppy disk's as there wont be enough storage space on the disk to do the job. good luck

Answer 10

If you are buying a new PC just put the harddrive in the new PC as a slave and transfer them over, or install a new CD R/W drive you could get one for about £10 and burn them to disk, its probably an IDE port, just for info when shopping but check your motherboard manual.