I use an external hard drive to save my designs on. I used to back up on disks but I have too many designs now to do that. It's easy I just set the time to back up every day at the same time. This way I don't forget its on automatic. It has saved me a few times. Suzanne

I use the Click-free unit and an external drive. I like to use 2 different devices now..

I have USB external hard drive that backs up automatically each night of the folders that I specify. Don in TX

Thank you for asking this question. I was wondering the same!

I also use an external hard drive that backsup every night all emb designs & my internet favorites, had to try to rebuild my internet favorites and passwords to all those sites after a crash and that was a nightmare, so I now back that up as well......

Linda, you are going to get so many different ideas on this. I back up my designs on dvd-rw. I keep them in a box that I got at wal-mart from their office supply dept. I have a dvd-rw for each category, like say, Flowers, then I put the diferent ones in sub-folders, like roses, daisies, etc. The ones I purchase, mostly from emblibrary are kept separate and also in folders. I use a flash drive when I want to take the design to my em and save special projects on them until I'm done. Hope that makes sense. It works for me and right now I have about 25 dvd-rw. Have fun! Carol

I learned the hard way. I had to take my computer to a repair guy and bought an external drive to have everything copied from by computer that burnt up the video card. I use the external to store and the flash drives to download to my embroidery machine and have several that I use so it is a lot more portable. Therefore I have more than one copy of the designs I use more often. I break my files down to sort them and rename them so I know what I have when I am looking for something. Hope this helps.

DH does both of ours in an external hard drive.

What is an external hard drive?

I use a USB stick to download my enbroiderydesigns, Than I write them to an external harddrive and I burn DVD's as well, just in case.

External hard drives are separate hard drives in a case that can be plugged into your computer and used for storage. They also can crash.I have mine in multiple places. I dl onto a flash drive and put that on cd at the end of the month. I make 2 copies of the cd and make sure they can be read before I clear the flash. Then I place a copy of that cd on my external. Things are saved according to website-have a folder system A-Z with extra folders for working alphabets and pdfs of projects. Later(when I have time, LOL) I go through these and place them according to catagories. When I get enough to fill a cd, I then make ones of sorted designs. Not saying I can find things in a flash, but they are copied all over the place.
Jo

Just a note to all those trusting the safety of their designs to an external harddrive solely; those, too, malfunction! They are a great, fast way of saving the
designs, in case your computer crashes. I purchased an
external harddrive, feeling so secure about my precious designs that I had spent so much time downloading. Two months after purchase, it would not function at all. I am so thankful that I had, on a regular basis, backed up my designs on RW CDs!
Angel

I put mine on a USB stick and had my son burn them to a CD. I don't remove them from my computer though and as I add designs I will have to move my favorites to USB so eventually they will go to CD also. External hard drives are too expensive if you aren't doing a business with the designs.

Now I back up on external hard drive and cd's. Try to keep a copy of cd's for me and send one to my sister for safe keeping in case of fire. We live and learn and this is the best method I know of. BTW...when using EHD be sure to check that your designs are there, sometimes you can get a bad one and if you don't check you'll think you're safe and won't be...ask me how I know.

After my computer crashed, I have an external hard drive that I back up to and I also back that up to DVD. TOO much time and $$$$ invested in this hobby to lose! I have organized by category, animals, alphas, flowers, etc.. Most of those have sub categories and they too have more categories.. It can go on forever. I think my biggest files are for Alphabets, Flowers, Christmas/Winter, and sports/games. I have a misc. category (for stuff i just can't figure out where it should go)and the multiple download file for those files that contain more than one subject matter. It is still too messy for my liking.. For example, do you have one folder for redwork and cross-stitch or do you have those folders as sub categories?? As much as I try, it seems like I end up with both! I have WAY too many designs...ones that I will NEVER use.. I did a bit of purging before the holidays..but still have to have 2 DVDs to store them all on. (not counting the purchased CDs) For what it's worth I would be a mess without my BUZZ EXPLORE program. It was worth every penny I have paid for it. It opens zipped files (without unzipping them) and displays an image of the design. Makes knowing what I have so much easier. I have a Babylock program that has similar capabilities, but the Buzz program reads more file types (artista, xxx,csd)although none will convert to Artista, and none of the programs I have will work with the latest version of Artista, which I guess now runs on a more graphic interface (???) I know I have some multiples of designs I have downloaded, but for now that's a project for another day.
I would worry about losing a USB stick device and I need more than what they hold anyways!
Great question! thanks for asking it.

I use an external hard drive - also have an extra drive on my PC - that does nothing but store my designs - when I access them it is from the external - I have a couple USP thumbdrives that I use to get my designs back and forth to my machines and a couple cards, too. I have a backup setup on a regular basis on my PC for both my hard drive and external.

very good answers girls, but are the embroidery police going to come get us as we are suppose to save one copy of that design.....not 4 or 5 on different devices....there was a big ta-do over this just about the time I joined this group in July.....
JUST WONDERING....

Good luck in which ever method works for you.
Back-ups are very NB in case of crashes.
My favorite are Dvd which I do every 3 mths. These I store in ziplock bags.
Have fun sorting to categories.
From Bev

I save the designs on my computer by site (and paid/free). I use an organizing software to categorize them (I use ann the gran catalog xprress which is very similar to the buzz tools software someone mentions below). I backup to an external hard drive regularly and to occassionally to DVD's to put in the safe deposit box (I do this for my regular PC's data too) in case of fire, etc. I only use flash drives to move designs to the machine - I have WWWAAAYYY to much to store it there "permanently". My name is "pcteddyb" and I am a design-aholic.

I have 2 drives in my PC - I save to the one drive and have the other as back up. I also have an external drive. I do not keep designs on the USB flash drives. These are only used to put from PC to my machines. I keep my designs by digitizer(at least now I do), and then by design types in the folders.

I do pretty much what the other cuties do and use an external hard drive. Then I have some collections on DVD/CDs. Left my most favorite designs on my DH's computer when my computer was broke (I planned that as a backup) and send some designs to an extra e-mail account. The external drive has all my designs together and since I've hear that they can go bad I saved them to the other sources. Over kill probably but many are not on the sites anymore so the backup of the backups reassures me of a safety net.

Hi Linda
All my designs are on a external portable hard drive I have a 500gb which is about two thirds full.
As I switch between my desktop and my lap top its easy for me to take all my designs with me lol.
also by having this amount of data on an external drive it leaves my pc/laptop ram free which means it continues to perform as fast as the day I bought it.
I also then back up my external hard drive regulary with usb sticks or rw dvds.
I have organised all my files to my liking, I also have a folder where I download any new designs to, before placing them into the correct folder.
I keep any design by a particular designer in their folder regardless of type of design.
When I first began I used to look for freebies but I soon learnt that there would never be enough hours in my lifetime to stitch these out.
Big hugs from London
Maria xx

Thank you for asking this question. I back up to DVD's once a month and have done since I started collecting and am looking to purchase an external drive. It is good to here all the different comments on how to store designs. some designs are so precious and the freebies are often not available after a certain time so is good to have them backed up. Hugs Sally

Thanx for asking! My DH just bought me a 1T External Hard drive for Christmas but I haven't taken it out of the package yet. Haven't had time yet cause I know I will have to learn how to use that too! Hahaha!!! Right now my designs are all on my new computer and it keeps running slower & slower. Too many designs. I am still learning so many things, my brain is on ZONK mode! hahaha! Hugs, Judy

I use a SSD (solid state disk) drive. No moving parts in a SSD, so they are supposed to last 10 years. I make a back up copy from the PC on the SSD about once a month. I would not use re-writable CD's, as they are prone to failure. I've also made a DVD back up, though I haven't done that on a systematic basis. I think the best is to use Carbonite and do an on-line back up, but it costs $50 a year.

As I have mentioned in November, my external harddrive packed up AFTER my laptop's harddrive crashed a month earlier. I told myself to transfer my files back to new harddrive on lap top and I did not. NO I HAVE NOTHING!!!Luckily a few sites where I bought in the past, resend the designs. Those who have new sites cant do it. Very hard and expensive lesson to learn.

I hardly ever download embroidery designs but I do download clipart for digitizing. It sounds like you have the same mess I do. I format my pc regularly so I have lots of stuff on external hard drives. As others have mention these can fail and so can thumb drives. I try to regularly back up to dvd I am in the process of organizing these files into category folders and sub-folders named for where I got them from. I am doing this because when I digitize a design and put it on my site I legally have to state where I got the picture from. I know a lot of people do this with there embroidery designs because they want to know where they got them from so they know whether to go back or not. Have fun with your organizing I am on day 2 of sorting out my files. lol.
Alice.

I make files in different categories such as animals, flowers, xmas,lace etc. Then I make subdivisions in the files Animals:bugs, birds,cats etc Then I make sub sub divisions Bugs: ladybirds, spiders,etc. It was quite a task when I started it but it works quite well for me. Every month I burn the designs on a cd as back up.

thanks everyone for the feedback and expertise-sounds like I will be looking into purchasing an external hard drive for my laptop-actually my husband wants to get one also for the new IMac desktop(I still haven't tried that computer out-we got it for Christmas-I am used to my windows vista-the mac is sooooo different).***'s to all ~linda~