Cloud photo/video storage

I keep a backup on Amazon's photo storage, which is unlimited and free if you ae a Prime member.

I use Backblaze for cloud backups of all my files of all filetypes.

What is the upload speed of your Internet service? That may be the cause of your upload slowness, and won’t be improved even if you do get another cloud storage solution.

iCloud for all iPhone photos.

Everything on my Mac gets backed up on Backblaze continually, and the best (well the most important to me) photos end up in my Flickr account.

Locally I also have everything backed up on a Time-machine drive, and two other external drives specifically backing up my photos

Never trust just one backup. Sooner or later one will fail.... and if you’ve only got the one, it’s too late ;-)

aimeemiller21 said:

I am an amateur photographer, mostly just my children. I have thousands of photos/videos. I am quite paranoid about losing them. I have external hard drives and even read some recommendations from the forum on here. But I was wondering what some of you use for cloud storage?? I have iDrive but it is soooo slow. It takes all day to download 3% of my files. I'm afraid I don't trust it quite as well as I would like. I don't want to break the bank either. I do however want an added place to store my photos/videos that does not decrease the quality of my media. Please assist!!

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Buy another hdd to back it up the data. If you want to be ultra safe, buy two hdd to make two backup copies. Put one in the bank safe.

Your data will be deleted if you don't pay to continue the cloud base service.

I use Google drive and OneDrive to store photo

I recommend NOT using OneDrive if you have embedded IPTC titles, keywords and descriptions - OneDrive may mess with you. I wrote a blog post with the details of what happened to me.

Flickr and google photos, although I'll stop using google photos when it stops being free, and rely just on Flickr. I have everything backed up to external drives so if Flickr go bust all won't be lost. I chose Flickr as there is unlimited storage for photos and videos (up to 10 mins/1gb each)

You can also use YouTube to store videos privately.

I think my internet speeds are fairly slow when it comes to transferring my media to cloud storage. we live away from any verizon/comcast hookups and we use consolidated communications. we also have the base option to save money. there are times where I can't stream and use the computer at the same time. so, my internet is definitely a factor.

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions so far. I have to start backing everything up. For all who buy multiple external HDs, do you buy different brands or the same brand?

People will have different thoughts on the best external storage device brands. If you stick with any reputable name you won't go far wrong, but remember nothing is infallible - that's why you should have at least 2 and preferably 3 backups, and a clear strategy for managing them (and testing they work from time to time). It might feel like overkill, but trust me, if you lose all your photos and data because of a lack of backup or one failing (internal or external) drive, you'll wish you'd done it differently!

All my external backup devices are different brands as it happens....

Try this website to measure your Internet speed:

https://www.speedtest.net/

Knowing your upload speed will give you a very rough idea of whether cloud storage is reasonable for you.

--
http://therefractedlight.blogspot.com

aimeemiller21 said:

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions so far. I have to start backing everything up. For all who buy multiple external HDs, do you buy different brands or the same brand?

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I buy best buy easy store drive when they go on sale. The current gold standard is 14tb for $190.

Go to slickdeals.net to check for deals.

My setup is a plex server to run my entire media collection. Plex have a free and paid version. The free version pretty much cover everything you need. I did bought a lifetime subscription. My plex server is now over 50tb and growing.

Think of plex as a personal Netflix. Unlike Netflix you can have photos and music in your server. You can run plex server on your desktop. Easy to setup. Plex isn't the only media server out there but it is the biggest and well known of them all. Afaik all media servers have a free version or completely free.

Plex.tv

My primary cloud storage is Google drive, the 100gb storage is quite cheap (less than $3 NZD a month) and I use it to backup only the best of my photos (raw and corresponding jpegs) that I want to keep.

I've also got 20gb adobe creative cloud storage that comes free with my Lightroom subscription. It's been good to use but currently maxed out, plus as far as I've been able to find they don't offer expansion options unless I change my whole subscription plan.

I've used dropbox as well, but just the free version. It's been relatively reliable and ok to use.

I would advise against using Onedrive unless you use their apps. I paid for their 100gb option (same price as Google drive) and used it to backup some of my media off the phone via the browser. The upload was ridiculously slow and unreliable, with multiple instances of errors and upload fails. The errors and upload fails were so frequent I had to manually go through 100s of files and find which files didn't upload and correct those errors. I queried this with Microsoft and they only said if I should use their standalone app if I want reliable uploads and downloads, they don't take responsibility for the unreliable browser behaviour at all and will not correct the issue. With Google drive I haven't had a single upload or download problem on the browser.

peter826 said:

I keep a backup on Amazon's photo storage, which is unlimited and free if you ae a Prime member.

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Then it's not free, now is it?

Your limiting factor will be your internet connection speed. You may even find your service provider will object to you using huge amounts of data.

I've got 900Mbit/s up and down and it still takes a long time to move much data.

Buy another USB hard drive or two so you've three or four copies and keep one off site. Bank boxes are popular with American members from what I see on here. Perhaps at work or with a friend or family member. You swap them over from time to time, esp. after you've taken a lot of images you want to preserve.

If the cloud servers are shut down, you lose access to your stuff. One day google will change their terms, one day Amazon will change their minds. Never trust your image bank entirely to the cloud.

Flash drives are just that, temporary working space.

The hard drives sitting on your shelf are best. You can back them to the cloud as an offsite back up. All my images reside on portable hard drives. I plug in the drive to my computer to access the images for whatever and then the modified copy is saved back to the drive.

The drives are backed up to the cloud via Backblaze as an offsite backup.

PS: curate your images or no one will ever have the stamina to sift through them for the good stuff

so many things to think about...I really appreciate the help everyone. this probably is a stupid question but since some of you don't rely on a web based storage option what is really the difference between a personal at home cloud storage option (like WD My Cloud) and an external hard drive??

aimeemiller21 said:

so many things to think about...I really appreciate the help everyone. this probably is a stupid question but since some of you don't rely on a web based storage option what is really the difference between a personal at home cloud storage option (like WD My Cloud) and an external hard drive??

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An external hard drive connects to your computer via a high-speed data channel, like the common USB 3, or some similar technology. *Internal* hard drives typically use an even faster data bus.

How much of a difference the speed of a data channel makes depends on the speed of the hard drive itself. The all-electronic solid state drives, which are considerably faster than the old mechanical hard drives, can really take advantage of faster data channels.

The WD My Cloud connects to your network via an Ethernet cable, and typically the My Cloud is connected to an Ethernet switch, and not directly to the computer. For example, you might plug a My Cloud into your WiFi router. The typical gigabit speeds offered by these devices are slower than the data channels for a directly connected external hard drive. Also, you have to make sure that everything in your network between the computer and My Cloud can also support the higher gigabit speeds, otherwise you'll get considerably slower speeds.

The advantage of a network connected solution, like the My Cloud, is that you can place the device far away from your computer, and it does not need to be physically attached to it. For example, you can back up the files from a laptop to a My Cloud via WiFi. The device can be on the other side of your home or even thousands of miles away, thanks to the Internet. In my experience, this technology works well for backups, as fast interactive speed isn't needed, and large quantities of data don't need to be transferred immediately, but rather, the data can be transferred over many hours.