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I am a member of the Lenspiration Community and have posted several photos on the Image Editing and Photo Critique forums. Now, I’m posting several questions on this forum because I thought that it probably fits best here. After my hard disk spoiled in July 2015, I was looking for other online storage spaces to store my pictures. This hard disk stored eight years’ worth of pictures and videos, and I guess I had trusted it too much seeing that I did not have a backup for it. I’ve been storing my pictures in Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Dropbox. Does anyone here have any other online storage options for storing pictures? I know Mr. Staddon has used Picasa Web Albums to store some of his pictures. Is it free? If so, how much is the available storage space on Picasa?
Hey @joshua_ong, I’m very sorry to hear about your hard drive failing! I lost most of my pictures from the year 2009 due to that same problem, so I can begin to feel for you, though I couldn’t imagine loosing everything since 2008! God bring you through as you continue trusting him, learning lessons, and laying up treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust (nor hard drive failure) will corrupt.
I do not rely on online storage for backups at this time because it is expensive and time-consuming compared to external hard drive storage.
When I back my pictures up, I do not backup the edited versions. I backup the original with it’s Lightroom-generated XMP sidecar file. Because I shoot RAW on a Canon 5D Mark II, my originals are regularly over 20MB in size. So now you can see that, because of the size and volume of my pictures, online storage would become very expensive very fast, and it would take a long time to upload to the Internet.
Instead, I use an external hard drive system. I store my pictures on one hard drive, and then back that hard drive up onto a second hard drive. I store the second hard drive in a separate location (ideally in a fire-proof safe).
Using multiple external hard drives might seem expensive up front, but I can purchase 3TB hard drives for about $100 US dollars, and one hard drive will last me for several years (even when I shoot tens of thousands of RAW images a year). The price of hard drives is always going down too. And using hard drives, I do not have to rely on Internet connectivity to access original files from the past.
It’s interesting that you noticed that I stored pictures on PicasaWeb. Those pictures are small JPG files I posted for display, so that folks could see my work on the Internet. I share, not store or backup, images in many places on the Internet.
Storage on PicasaWeb is free per picture up to a certain file size (up to 16 megapixels or something like that). This is another reason why I do not use online storage. I believe these are the prices for PicasaWeb: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/2375123?hl=en
In conclusion, I suggest you look into using two external hard drives for storing and backing up your original photos!
As far as storage online, there’s one that hasn’t been mentioned yet! 🙂
Yes, there will always be a free version of Flickr, and its only limitation is a maximum of 1 Terabyte of storage.
They supposedly will give you 1,000 GB, (or 1 Terabyte) of photo storage when you sign up, no questions asked, no payments necessary.
Please note that you can only upload .JPG files, so it’s not a full-fledged online backup, but you can definitely have it as a secondary backup, at least for your best photos. You can keep them private if you want, no-one can see them unless you share it with them.
James and @buddingphotographer, thank you very much for the storage options. I guess getting two hard drives for storing pictures is still better than storing them online. Thank you for recommending Flickr. I hadn’t known about it until you mentioned it to me. Looks like 1TB should be enough space to store my pictures.
Earlier this year, my hard drive which held every picture I have ever taken (11 years of photos) corrupted. It was quite a loss so we did some research for data recovery. I ended up working with http://300dollardatarecovery.com/ and they recovered all the data. It was a lesson learned. I now have several backup hard drives with my photo archives on each. You can find external 3 TB hard drives from B&H photo for around $100 – I personally find that easier than online storage. Whichever method you use, just be sure to keep back ups! 🙂
Ouch, @SarahLeePhoto, that is bad news! Thankfully, it all turned out well though!
Just FYI, Adorama is having a sale right now on 2TB HDDs, (That’s the cheapest this HDD has ever been, as far as I can tell) and 2TB should be plenty large for backups, unless you’re a professional whose library contains more than 100,000 photos… 🙂
Thank you very much, @SarahLeePhoto, for recommending 300dollardatarecovery.com. It’s pretty amazing what those guys in Silicon Valley can do- all for the price of $300. I completed their Chances Form and received a quick reply from them. Unfortunately, I won’t be sending my hard drive for repair since the shipping may cost as much as the repair if not more. I’m glad you were able to recover all of your data. I think I don’t really need 3TB of space for my pictures since I do not have as many as 100000 photos. Thank you for recommending those hard drives.
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