Back up of Organizer questions

[Kiku]

Hello! Hoping you could help me understand the backup procedure.

I have recently been moving many of my photographs off of my hard-drive onto an EHD, with the Copy/Move Offline Command. It then leaves a small thumbnail on my hard-drive, with a little CD symbol on the photograph so that I know the photo original is offline.

I have several questions regarding this.

After I moved about 4000 photographs offline, I did a Backup of my catalog to the EHD. It reconsigned the numbering system to B000001 and so on, as it explains in the Help menu. I recognize the photos I have already moved, by the size of the photograph. All the ones that I have moved offline show the size as being 80-130 kb in the back-up. All photographs that have not been moved from the C drive to the EHD were backed up at the full photo size of 2500-4000 kb.

When I moved the photos offline from their original folders on my C drive, I was left with an empty folder with a thumbs icon. I dumped the folder in my recycling bin. Is this alright to do this? Could this be where my computer is getting the "thumbs" of my photographs that show up in my organizer? Or are they located somewhere else? Or do I have to leave all of those "almost empty" folders on my hard-drive? Also, is it advisable (and can I) backup my catalog to both the EHD and my computer C drive? This way if I were to drop my EHD (heaven's forbide), I could restore my photographs from my DVD's, then access the backup from my C drive.

Would it be possible if someone could explain this for me?
Your help would be much appreciated.

With thanks,
Kiku

[Juergen D]

All the ones that I have moved offline show the size as being 80-130 kb in the back-up. All photographs that have not been moved from the C drive to the EHD were backed up at the full photo size of 2500-4000 kb.That sounds about right. The backup contains the full size images on the primary drive and the proxies for the ones that are off-line.

I dumped the folder in my recycling bin. Is this alright to do this?
Those thumbs are Windows system files keeping track of the contents of the folder. No problem deleting them together with the now empty folders they are contained in.
The proxies and thumbnails for the Organizer are kept elsewhere.

Also, is it advisable (and can I) backup my catalog to both the EHD and my computer C drive?
Yes, you can. It would come in handy if you accidentally delete images or make some other mistake. If the internal HD failed you would have to go to the EHD backup. If I wanted to be extra protected, I would copy, in Windows Explorer, both the catalog and the picture files and put them on a DVD or a second EHD.

Juergen

[Kiku]

Hi Juergen:

Thank you so much for that confirmation and your help! :) When one has so many hours dedicated to a project, one is afraid to lose all that work!

Kiku