How and where do you save your photos?

[sam_gordon]

I agree. Anything stored online has the risk of them suddenly going out of business or perhaps having damage done by hackers. I prefer offline storage that doesn't depend on some 3rd party. Even if they are just family photos, I don't want random strangers having access to them online (either those who run the backup/cloud storage or potential hackers). There are many types of devices that can be used for that purpose and there is no ongoing charge when you manage your own backup files.

But your own local backup files are subject to damage if there's a disaster (fire, flood). Online generally doesn't have that concern. As mentioned, the best system would be a local hard drive and an off site hard drive (which could be the cloud).

 

[_19disnA]

Yes, lots of things can go wrong. Always good to have a plan depending on how important the information is you don't want to lose. I would still rather be responsible for how I backup things offline then depend on some 3rd party.

 

[TiggerTrigger]

I pay for a Flickr Pro account. Storage is unlimited. My phone automatically backs up to the account so that all of my phone photos and videos make it on there. I manually upload my DSLR photo files to my account. My account defaults to private, so everything I upload should be for my eyes only unless I choose to make things public.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

When we get a new home (desktop) computer the old one is set up to be our storage one. Everything on the storage computer is backed up and that's stored in either my car or my husband's.

 

[luvthatduke]

All photos for past 20 years are on PC + 2 external HD.
I have an external CD/DVD burner & will be burning photos
to CD once I get them sorted.
About 8 years of photos are on CD, as that's how it worked
when we got them developed years ago.
I will not put anything on the cloud.

 

[tony67]

One other thing to think about as I have been messing with AI "photography" recently.
With all your pictures online in one place, if it gets hacked a lot can be done with them.

Just one more reason to store them locally.

 

[kdonnel]

All photos for past 20 years are on PC + 2 external HD.
I have an external CD/DVD burner & will be burning photos
to CD once I get them sorted.
About 8 years of photos are on CD, as that's how it worked
when we got them developed years ago.
I will not put anything on the cloud.

Have you tried pulling data from those CD? I tried to pull data from some that have been stored for 15 years and it was hit and miss. Some read ok, some were unreadable.

They were stored in zippered CD storage folders inside my climate controlled house. The pattern of the fabric in the pockets in the folder had been transferred to the CD. Attempts at cleaning the pattern transfer away did not work and the CD remained unreadable.

I was glad at that point that there was nothing on the CD that was not also stored on other more durable media.

 

[tony67]

Have you tried pulling data from those CD? I tried to pull data from some that have been stored for 15 years and it was hit and miss. Some read ok, some were unreadable.

They were stored in zippered CD storage folders inside my climate controlled house. The pattern of the fabric in the pockets in the folder had been transferred to the CD. Attempts at cleaning the pattern transfer away did not work and the CD remained unreadable.

I was glad at that point that there was nothing on the CD that was not also stored on other more durable media.

Yeah CDs, especially the older ones, not so great.

A lot depends on the quality of the disk as well.

 

[luvthatduke]

Thanks for the heads up.
I did transfer all of my discs to USB a couple of years ago,
and didn't have any problems.
I forgot to include USB as my other apparatus for saving them.
I plan on saving them to both CD and USB when sorted.
I will take both of your comments into consideration

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

The older stuff is backed up on flash drives/external HD. I have an external HD stored offsite that has pretty much my entire computer (along with older pictures).

Pretty much all my pictures are backed up and sync with google photos. My iCloud account houses my more "recent stuff" (although it also syncs to google photos). However, I do not use iCloud for actual storage because it fills up and I have to empty it periodically.