Storing 40,000 images!

[Mark Winson]

Hi my Mac is very slow.
I have 40,000 images and wish to remove and store most of them and leave an amount of my photographic images for exhibiting on my Mac.
I have an external hard drive , but how do I know they stored safely on the hard drive?
also I have an Apple iPhone with all the 40,000 images on there too !
do I delete these too as I feel they will keep backing up to my Apple Mac .
I’m not very tech minded so would appreciate Clear and simple help and advice.
Thanks Mark

 

[nurgle]

40,000 is not many... I have 250,000+ images, from my poster buisness, many of them are up to 1 gig. (and that is not counting my 60 years of photographing). the problem is not the number of files but the size. mine are spread across 12 hard disks (6 active disks and 6 backup copies of those disks, as yes drives do fail, and I have a drawer of 9 dead drives).my drives ranging from 2TB (small portable ) to 8TB, sorted by catagory, with some catagory solely to one specific drive.
Are your images small or large, Jpeg or PSD (all my files are PSD). Jpega i Found sadly are too easily corruptible.
by the sound of the 40,000 on the iphone, I am guessing Jpegs. backing up to a hard disk always raises the 'back of the mind' worry that they have not coppied over correctly. (hence my dual copies of everything.) but you can use programs such as 'file buddy' to compare folders on th ecomputer and the external, by size...
when backing up also,I leave the computer to itself and dont touch anything.. (except setting the control panle to not go to screen saver.
and that is just for useing files. for archiving all this Have jts bought the verbatim Lifetime archival disks and drive. butthat is another story.