What cloud provider do you use for picture/data backup?

[veggieburger]

We have a few thousand digital medium res pictures of our little girl, and I cringe at the idea of losing them. Can you recommend a good, affordable provider so I can upload and forget about them? THANKS!

[FlashUNC]

Google Photos. It's free.

[huck*this]

^^^^What he said^^^^

And also syncs with your phone for a seamless backup.

[marsh]

+ Google. We just embarked on a massive project to combine our photo feeds to one google account. Just FYI, storage in super hi-res is limited for free.
Sucks for newer pics taken with my Fuji mirrorless, but old 35mm scans should be no problem. The best service I've found so far.

[fkelly]

When you put your photos on Google, you sign their terms and conditions and basically they own them. Google has changed the way they store photos a half dozen or so times in 10 years ... from Picasaweb to Google+ to Google Drive, to now an iteration of Google Photos.

Google may do what you need, but you could also consider getting an external hard drive and backing the photos up there. Detach it from the computer when you are done. Reattach it to update it periodically with new photos. They will be safe and under your control, completely. Even store them "off-site" if that makes you comfortable.

[joosttx]

Dropbox

[mwynne]

How automated do you want the process?

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

[benb]

None, last time I checked Google/Amazon/etc.. don't backup RAW files from DSLRs. I'm not real interested in Googles TOS too, Amazon is probably OK but any of these ones that are super cheap are and are just trying to get all your smartphone pictures are a bit sketchy.

And I have like 4TB of files. I need to do it at some point but it's going to cost quite a bit to start. Backing up 4TB over the internet is not real feasible, for me it's going to involve a backup vendor that ships hard drives to me, then I load them up and ship them back. Once the initial backup is done network backup should be no problem.

At some point I priced out putting them in Amazon S3 or Glacier and using open source software and/or writing my own software to do it. That was going to be really expensive too.

I have a Smugmug account too, I use that as a backup for just high quality/portfolio quality shots. It's kind of out of date too though. They also don't accept RAW files, but then it's not really a backup provider.

I keep two copies at home.. one on my PC, one on my NAS. My NAS has 16TB in it across 5 drives, it's going to take a long time to fill and the drives are hot swappable, it's pretty safe unless the house burns down.

[rusty1200]

Verizon

[batman1425]

Not the biggest fan of cloud based systems. Despite the convenience, I don't like having my sentimental personal stuff hosted elsewhere. Another option - you and a friend/family member each get personal home clouds. Back up locally to your own drive, and send a copy to theirs. Many of the turn key NAS systems have secure FTP (and like) protocols for the transfers built in, or you can set up your own VPN between the devices.

Two copies of all your data, in physically separate locations.

Edit - Do what benb suggests for the initial copy if you have a lot of data to start with. You can each get a 2 drive setup, and make copies on both. Then send one of the drives to each other.

[ergott]

I have Smugmug for uploads, but I use Carbonite for my computer that has all the raw files.

[fkelly]

Another option is to use a web hosting service. While these are usually used for hosting web sites, they can come with unlimited storage for $3 to $7 per month (depending on the term you sign up for). They don't give a darn what kind of files you store there (so raw files are fine). They come with a management tool that you can use to upload files (CPANEL) or you can set up a FTP client to make things easy on yourself. I'd suggest using a ZIP program to package up your files before transferring. I use InMotionHosting.

[tumbler]

Google Photos. It's free.

+1. It's seamless and they offer free, unlimited storage for images up to 16 megapixels. This is plenty for me, even for my DSLR shots, and has replaced my 1TB NAS drive since it is faster and infinitely more convenient. You can dump the photos in there from any device and access them later from any device. The app is also great and the image recognition feature is pretty cool (ie. search for "bike" and it does a pretty good job of finding your pictures of bikes).

Bonus tip: I highly recommend installing this on the smartphones of your parents/grandparents/aunts/uncles and anyone else who regularly asks you for computer help. When they inevitably plug their phone into the computer and click "Restore iPhone" (for reasons we will never understand... they just can't avoid that button...) and delete all of their photos, you can remind them that all of those pictures of the family dog were safely backed up to Google Photos.

[rwerkudara]

Google photos. Lot of nice little features with the assistant, albums, facial recognition, etc.

[veggieburger]

Google Photos. It's free.

Is the resolution high enough on the free service to print basic photos?

Thanks!

[azrider]

Dropbox hands down.

IMHO: When you start talking cloud services of any kind the first and most important issue is security. Without it you got nothing. Dropbox and Google are pretty much neck and neck when it comes to external breaches but Google Photo has known history of internal breaches and security issues that make it a no go......"FOR ME".YMMV.

Google has always had an issue with over-stepping their user agreements also.....so there's that.

But that's just me.

[oldpotatoe]

Inexpensive external hard drive. If ya gotta have it and the internet/your cable/whatever isn't working..no pix.