Photo storage ideas

[gr1340]

I need some idea about what to do in regards to about photo storage/backup.

My PC has 2 internal drives and 2 external. One internal drive is 500gb and the externals are 750gb and 1tb. My normal action is upload somewhere online as they are taken then backup to the internal and then external drive.
The drives are getting full with less than 50gb remaining on each so it think I need to come up with a longer term solution.

I like the idea of online backup and currently have photos stored on Google, Flickr, Apple cloud and recently, Amazon. I have photos all over the place and I really want one online location that iPhones or android can upload to on wifi automatically and then 2 physical storage locations that are easy to back up to.

What is the best solution?

[sticks090460]

I use a 3Tb Seagate "personal cloud" drive. Lots of space, can be accessed from anywhere on pretty much anything if you have WiFi, and you can password protect bits and/ or make other bits publically available if you want mates to look at e.g. holiday snaps.

[R8VXF]

I have 10TB of online storage with OneDrive through my MS Office subscription. Apparently the OneDrive apps for Android/iOS/Mac are pretty good. Not sure if they auto upload though. OneDrive is built into win 8 and 10.

[Impasse]

Internet Confucius say: If they aren't stored in at least three separate locations then they aren't stored at all.

[jmorgan]

I use four external drives, one of them off site, one time machine and two with carbon copy cloner. The cloud, and dvd and blu ray. I bank on on failing at some point. Also use the free stuff on Flickr.

[Troubleatmill]

If your house burns down - everything in it is lost.

Companies like Google, Amazon, Box, Dropbox etc - seem to know a thing or two about storing stuff online - and having a relatively high uptime.

[Simpo Two]

Troubleatmill said:

If your house burns down - everything in it is lost.

Perhaps there's a market for a storage unit made from old aircraft black boxes...

[ian in lancs]

Have a web-site; smugmug is hosted on the Amazon servers

Use an on-line backup; Carbonite replicates the drive/folder so stuff is easy to retrieve

Use a local external drive; I have 140k photos consuming 3TB of a 4 TB drive that replicates a 2 x 2TB internal drives.

For me that's it

Edited by ian in lancs on Sunday 17th May 08:16

[steveatesh]

I have two time machine backups and use Dupplica online backup (for everything) which is unlimited in size and backs up in folders too.

I also send photos I want to keep to flickr .

I believe my house burning down is covered, along with electrical spikes, hard drive failures etc. the problem is how do you leave all this stuff to family when you die!

[Simpo Two]

steveatesh said:

I believe my house burning down is covered, along with electrical spikes, hard drive failures etc. the problem is how do you leave all this stuff to family when you die!

Indeed; they only have to reach one unknown username or password and that's a life's work up the Swannee.

Print the fkers out and put them in an album I think.

[Craikeybaby]

Full res processed images go to Flickr/my website.

My Mac internal hard drive gets backed up automatically, by Time Machine, to an external harddrive which is alway connected to my Mac, I am away for a few days, in which case it gets moved to the safe. Weelly, or after any significat imports to Lightroom I use different back up software (CCCloner) to make a bootable back up of my Mac's internal HDD, this goes to a LaCie Rugged harddrive, which is kept away from the house.

I have experimented with online back ups before, but found that for backing up raw files even my fast internet connection got overwhelmed, as home broadband is more geared towards downloads - the A in ADSL stands for Assymetric.

With regards to running out of space, I have a smart collection set up in Lightroom, which highlights images which have been in my collection for over 6 months, but which I haven't done anything with (I apply a colour/star rating on export) - I can then review these images and delete, on thebasis that if I haven't done anything with them in 6 months, I am unlikely to in the future.