Got another question, but no advice . . . .
How much more trouble is it to work directly on the external hard drive opposed to doing all the organization work directly on the 'puter and then copying to the hard drive?
It depends on the tools you are using. If your toolset does not use a database (ie tags are stored in the picture files and accessed at runtime), then using an external drive is not an issue at all. If your toolset creates an index database, then it may get confused when the application starts up without the drive attached and the database references files that are not available. Also, if you edit the files using another computer or application, the database ends up out of date. In the worst case, it may have to reindex your external drive whenever it get reattached - a problem with many Gb of data.
YMMV
Si
My method is by “type of event,” such as Business Trip, Personal Travel, Family Event, General, or by year/subject. I have a folder for pet photos, for example. And I use a pic renamer tool to rename the pictures within the folders sequentially, such as “2008NCVacation001.jpg, 2008NCVacation002.jpg” and the like. Or, you know, in theory I do this. I’m a bit behind at the moment. 
Ideally I’d like to name/tag every photo, but realistically I don’t see that happening. What I do is make folders like this:
20081031 - Halloween Party
20081225 - Christmas
20081231 - New Years Eve Debauchery
Just by sorting the directory you can see your photos in chronological order. You can also search for a word like “Christmas” and see all the folders with that word in the title.
I keep all my photos in a \photos directory and also back that directory up to another hard drive. CDs/DVDs are too much of a pain, I’d use a USB hard drive to periodically back up to, then put it in a safe place, preferably not in the same building as the master copy.
Just adding that if you store your photos on Picasa (or another photo filing service) you’ll have a remote backup, even if your computer and backup hard drive are physically destroyed.
Well, although it works for me, I wouldn’t say it’s the smartest idea in the world, because if Flickr goes under (Og forbid), I lose the time & work I spent tagging everything.
On the other hand, if my hard drive crashes, I have Flickr as a remote backup, as SeanArenas correctly points out. And that did in fact happen to me, and I was able to re-download my stuff from Flickr (though only the cropped, rotated, adjusted images- not the originals, which were on my local drive and gone forever). You might think losing the originals is no big deal, but you never know when they’ll come in handy. My friends’ house was robbed and they asked around if anyone had pics of their jewelry, which could very easily be cropped or otherwise edited out.
Having Flickr as a jury-rig backup is okay, but no matter what organizational system you use (iPhoto, hierarchical folders, Picasa), you really need to backup to an external drive that you retain control of.
FWIW, Apple released a new iPhoto today at Macworld, and I think I’ll check it out.
Based on the Keynote, I found it a bit underwhelming. Many of the features are already in Picasa 3 (Which Google finally released for OS X this week).
Phil made a big deal out of the geotagging capabilities, but IMHO MS Pro Photo Tools on the Windows side is a superior geotagging product because in addition to the straight overhead map view, it allows you to look at oblique-angle (Pictometry Inc.) aerial photography “Bird’s Eye” images. The GPS and time shifting features are OK as well.
There are several services which allow you to save your full-size pics. Trust me, my main photo camera is a Digital Rebel XTi, and I’m not shy with the shutter button. I pay something like $10 or $20 a year for extra storage on Google, and using Picasa I can automatically sync a ton of my photos at max resolution.
I don’t store all of them, because … being bold with the trigger, I know most of my pictures will go to waste - I sift for the gems, and those are the ones I upload at full res. The rest get uploaded at 1600 if at all.
Are there any programs that will pull the date off the picture and allow me to batch name them?
I have used a tool called renrot in the past. It is a command line tool written in Perl. It can be a bit tricky to start with, but is really powerful.
I now use the batch rename tool in DigiKam, a linux photo album/tagger.
Si