Backing up photos to Picasa Web under Windows Vista

[squiddog]

I use the Windows camera wizard to import my photos, and then I use Picasa Web Albums to backup my photos online.

Back when I used Windows XP, the Scanner and Camera Wizard would always import all my photos from my camera to one directory. In this fashion I was able to use Picasa to archive ALL of my photos at once to Web Albums. In Picasa I would select the "My Pictures" directory, click "Upload to Web Albums", and it would be able to tell which files were there, which weren't, and update my online archive (a differential update).

Now with Vista, the wizard that imports photos always wants to create date time subdirectories for the photos, so I end up with multiple directories full of dated photos, instead of one directory. This would be OK with me, except for the fact that in Picasa (from what I can tell) I cannot select multiple photo folders to upload to a web album at once. I end up selecting the 01_01_2009 folder, uploading it, then selecting the 01_02_2009 folder, uploading it, ad infinitum. This gets to be a real pain, not to mention now I have to figure out which photos have, and which haven't been archived to Picasa Web yet.

The bottom line is that I want a single-click (hopefully differential) backup for all the folders underneath a selected folder, or some way to multi-select all my photos so they can be archived at the same time. Is there a way?

I would be open to other online backup services. In fact my paid sub to Picasa is about to expire/renew so if switching is necessary, now is a good time.

Thanks,
Dave

[Franglais]

PICASA thinks every subfolder is a new album.

You could always stop using the VISTA import wizard. Treat the camera as a hard drive then just drag and drop everything you want into the destination folder

[squiddog]

Oh, hadn't thought of that! Good idea. I had tried using Windows Live Photo Gallery, and Picasa importers as well as the regular Windows one. They all want to create subfolders.

I still would like to hear if anyone else has any suggestions, i.e. how do you back up your photos? I think my wife (who does this mostly) would be able to handle a straight cut/paste operation, but she is not technical; I think a wizard of some sort would be preferred. But I will ask her.

I started looking at Windows Live last night - 25 GB of free space is better then $20/year for 10 GB at Google! I might just have to switch services...