Any helpful tips for me? I want to save aton of images and videos and what not on my computer but I also want it hidden and stuff.

Get an external hard drive. They're cheap and hold a ton of stuff.

I keep all that 'fun stuff' in one folder (with sub folders inside) but then I can hide that folder if I know someone else will be on the PC.

Ha, reminds me back when I was a younger bator & having to hide my "stuff" but no matter how clever I thought I was, 'zines in the bottom drawer, under the drawer, between the mattress, where ever - mom always found it. Agh.

Hmm, not that I need to hide stuff anymore but won't programs like Picasa still find our stuff even with-in subfolders?

For me, I have my bate computer, an ancient laptop & I have my computers for work & I never mix them up.

Yeah I am defiantly thinking an external hard drive is the way to go on this one. 500GB should be enough.

I use an external hard drive with my archives buried in a folder within a folder within a folder. The images that end up on my phone or other devices just have to be dumped into that folder asap, most of the time. The big thing is clearing your history, cookies, etc, or restoring factory settings now and then on a device. You can never hide digital things completely, though, so if there are others using your stuff, dont get too comfortable

Large capacity USB Flash Drives are available now too.

What's best way to remove all traces of pic,videos and search words from computer and cell phone? Any software? I buy alot of used electronics and don't want someone elses troubles lol

Like palmer I have a dedicated private PC that only I can access. When I travel, I take my favorites on a portable USB drive, since I use a company laptop then. I use a MRU blaster program to remove traces of me accessing the pics and vids on the portable drive. I never surf porn sites with my company laptop, which is why I am out of touch with my on-line bator buddies while I am traveling.

make a boot able USB stick with "tails" on it. make a persistent drive when you run tails. stick in any computer that will boot from USB and it leaves no trace on the PC you run it on. just remember USB sticks have limited read/writes. I lost 12 gig of my fav stuff once.

My only concerns were if I took my computer into a shop but I don't really give a shit if they look at it

I have an encrypted hard drive that I use on my old desktop. I found the encryption info and software on the web for free and it work really well as long as I don't forget the code which is very complex.

Also for all my surfing i have one browser set to eliminate all history and I usually use "In-Private" or "Incognito" options which leave no trail.

was not aware that usb had read write limits ?? .

I have a 32gb jump drive that came with encryption software on it.
My Windows allows me set it as the internet temp file so everything I do on the inet goes to it, not my computer.
No traces that I was even on the inet show up.

All solid state drives have a limitation on the number of PE (program-erase) cycles they can undergo before their performance is degraded. Depending on the type of Flash Drive technology, PE cycles of a few thousand to 100,000 or more are claimed. Modern USB Flash Drives have apparently been much improved in this regard over earler models.