[Lulamae]

A while ago I started backing up all of my photography work (well over a few thousand images) on my external hard drive. Then I started running out of space on my pc and needed to always put every image on there while deleting it on my computer.

a) obviously it's now no longer a back up function, it's storage. Am I being unsafe? My world would end a little if I lost 2 years of work

b) lately whenever I try to safely eject the decide it tells me that "generic volume" is in use and can't be ejected. I close everything and it still won't let me. I tried to open task manager to quit anything, but couldn't find anything. In the end I just end up pulling out the cable, but again...I'm terrified of losing my images

[TheSownRose]

The obvious answer is, don't put them all in one place.

[gagaslilmonsteruk]

Reboot the computer??

[Skip_Snip]

Shut down your computer,silly

[Lulamae]

(Original post by Skip_Snip)
Shut down your computer,silly

But I've heard of so many people who's usb sticks went haywire via this.

[Lulamae]

(Original post by TheSownRose)
The obvious answer is, don't put them all in one place.

So, basically, "Buy another external hard drive.">?

[OMGWTFBBQ]

Do people actually go to the trouble of safely ejecting?

Remember the Golden Rule OP, "data you don't have at least three copies of is data you don't care about".

[whyumadtho]

(Original post by Lulamae)
A while ago I started backing up all of my photography work (well over a few thousand images) on my external hard drive. Then I started running out of space on my pc and needed to always put every image on there while deleting it on my computer.

a) obviously it's now no longer a back up function, it's storage. Am I being unsafe? My world would end a little if I lost 2 years of work

b) lately whenever I try to safely eject the decide it tells me that "generic volume" is in use and can't be ejected. I close everything and it still won't let me. I tried to open task manager to quit anything, but couldn't find anything. In the end I just end up pulling out the cable, but again...I'm terrified of losing my images

Buy another hard drive.

The MBR may become corrupted if you interrupt the drive when it's performing an operation, but that can be restored easily with any data recovery program.

[Rarrgh]

Back up stuff to the interwebs Google just released Google drive as well

[Mad Vlad]

(Original post by Lulamae)
But I've heard of so many people who's usb sticks went haywire via this.

Pretty unlikely to happen. Do a proper soft shutdown and it should end the process that's causing the deadlock.

[TheSownRose]

(Original post by Lulamae)
So, basically, "Buy another external hard drive.">?

Or some other form of storage, yes. It's not a good idea to keep things you hold dear in one place.

And also don't store both of them in the same place, lest you end up like someone I know who lost all eight copies of his dissertation because he kept them in one bag which he proceeded to lose.