New laptop

Thanks @ricky101. I checked some out a few weeks ago knowing that my camera cables have been stored safely somewhere - never to be seen again.

 

With respect I understand where you're coming from Jocko, but the unavailable space is not an issue for me as there's nothing that can be done about it.

 

I wasn't replying to anything you were posting. I was explaining to Pete where some of his space had gone.

 

I know where some of my space has gone but it appears windows is taking up almost double the space it should.

 

Hi,

Would suggest before going back to W10 which though good, is not as secure as W11 etc, why not try an alternative to the Photo App, is not the only way to look after your photos.

We also use Faststone, a popluar free program and you can readily import like any other program, just loaded ours in via usb cable as below.

Worth a try, only takes a few minutes, think you will like it as it can do lots of other things the photo app cannot.

FastStone Image Viewer - Powerful and Intuitive Photo Viewer, Editor and Batch Converter

 

Ricky, I had a look on eBay for KVM switch but there are so many to choose from, it's bewildering! I looked particularly at Dell models, as that is the make of my new PC & I found at least 10 in the UK.

"or just place the actual HDD in your new desktop and read off the pics that way, if its a Sata drive." I wanted to do precisely that the very hour the new PC arrived! I opened it up but, although there are connections for a 2nd HDD, it is very difficult to get at without taking lots of other components out to get to it! The 2nd HDD would sit below the original & there are several plastic parts. I was afraid that if I tried moving pieces out I might break something or not know how to put it back together! The PC is obviously not designed to be upgraded at home!

Perhaps it would have been better to use a USB stick. My wife has one & she did offer it to me but I thought the DVD option would be better. ()

"You do not say what your DVD Read problem was, drive read errors or Windows not liking the format, but might just be worth loading a program like VCL and seeing if that can read them ?" None of the above! It just refused to say there was a disc in the drive at all! I didn't seem to recognise that I'd put disc in! The three that work were all formatted on my old Win7 PC as were the other 4 that don't work. I did them one after another while I was on the old PC, then I put them in the new PC & it only recognised 3 of them. I've used at least 2 of them a couple of times without any trouble.

VCL is another video programme like Windows Player, right? How would that enable me to import them into the new PC, assuming that is it can read them?

"Another way would be to upload the pics via the web etc" A great many of my photos are already on MS Drive or on Google Photos. But most, especially of our 5 gkids, are only kept on the computer & there are Gbs of them - the reason I needn't so many DVDs to copy them across! Nearly everything in Win11 is uploaded to MS Drive & most photos are only available if I go online on the MS Drive!

I discovered a work around to get the photos off my phone onto the computer yesterday! I deactivated the Phone app on the computer & on my mobile! Now I can copy them across without problems!

 

We are not daily importers of photos etc, but agree the W11 default screen of the Photo App is not very good, though with a few tweaks to its Settings you can get it similar to W10, as below.

It also automatically starts the Photo App when we plug in the phone, will try it with a sd card.
Think is just a case of when you plug such a device in for the very first time, you get a little message saying , what to do with this device, you need to quickly click on it and select what app you want, or later change things in the settings.

Have tried to change things so we import directly into FastStone ( or Gimp etc) when we plug a device in, but unable to find any way to do that. Seems MS don't want to loose the Photo App.

As someone doing a lot of photo work it might still be worth spening some time getting used to FastStone and use that extra manual Start and Import ?

 

@Balc

VCL is a very versatile free program to do all sorts to video and audio files etc etc. worth loading for when other programs cannot do things.

Not really the right folk to advise on how to handle so many photos, though would suggest DVD is the worst medium to store them on.
If you want to keep your own copies of then suggest a usb3 External HDD is the best option, you can now get 5TB ones for just under £100. Though you need at least 2, main backup and second backup, as you can never rely on just one of anything.

 

I used VCL on my old laptop as I found windows wouldn't play certain DVDs, never did find out why.
I also had just a DVD player connected to the TV and that had its likes and dislikes as well.

Have you thought of printing them @Balc . Just joking.

 

These things are sent to try us @wiseowl but it sounds like you have it sorted out now. I've had no problems with my photo's on Windows11 but did transferring via my external hard drive from my old machine/Windows 10. On transfer it duplicated or tripled every photo which more than doubled what was being transferred. So back to the drawing board... the external hard drive had everything deleted including back-ups. All the photo's were deleted from my new machine then the process run through again. Thankfully, second time around it worked without a hitch.