issues with storing photos

[rosiegirl8]

hi,

i'm totally lost about what to do with my photos.

currently, i'm using image capture to upload photos into a photos folder and then drag all the uploaded photos into iphoto. then i would move all the photos from the original upload folder into date specific folders (2008, 200806 (june 08), 060108).

the whole process is arduous and probably unnecessary. i take a ton of photos and videos (about 9K-10K a year) and i like to make sure i have backups. but is this whole process unnecessary? is it taking up extra room on my mac (it's been running slower and slower)?

i'm guessing i have all the photos already in the iphoto library so i figured i could just upload into iphoto directly (although, do i have to upload everything on the memory card every time?!). but i looked at the iphoto library and nothing was organized by date (just by roll) and when i clicked on individual photos, the dates were listed as the upload date, not the date taken.

so the big questions:

what is the best way to organize my photos?
what is the best way to use iphoto?
if i delete the photos i've stored in folders, will my computer run faster? will i still be able to find the photos if they're not in dated folders?

for reference, i have an imac with these specs:

mac OS X 10.4.11
intel core 2 duo
2.16 GHz
1 GB memory

thanks!

[VirtualTracy]

http://macosx.com/forums/mac-os-x-sy...ng-photos.html