Clearing the Digital Clutter

June 6, 2009— -- Like most digital camera owners, Craig and Alison de Lauzon love that they can snap hundreds of photos at a time without having to worry about running out of space.

The problem? When all those pictures started to pile up on their home computer.

"We were shocked that we had nearly 22,000 photos," Craig de Lauzon said.

Those 22,000 photos -- enough to stretch for nearly two miles if laid out end to end -- were clogging the de Lauzon's computer, and their sheer volume made it almost impossible to find a great shot in a hurry.

"Sometimes, we'll label a file so-and-so's christening, but somebody else's wedding pictures are on there too, and then somebody else's birthday pictures," Craig de Lauzon said.

To remedy the digital photo overload, "GMA Weekend" sent in Becky Worley to teach the de Lauzons how to use new technology to finally sift through the photos, delete the bad ones and highlight the great ones.

Back Up Automatically

The first step was backing up all those memories. If the de Lauzons' computer crashed, those 22,000 photos would be gone. Unfortunately, it's something they've experienced before.

"A couple of years ago, we decided that we were going to take our entire CD collection and put it on our computer," Craig de Lauzon said. "So we actually did go out and buy a back-up hard drive, but ... there was always tomorrow, so we waited a week ... and the computer hard drive crashed."

The de Lauzons lost some of their music, but still do not back up routinely. Worley set up an external hard drive that made the process automatic, backing up any new photos every night all by itself.