Time to ditch my external drive?

[cmwade77]

Just be careful relying on Flickr for long term storage. I have read a few posts on some photography forums recently about Yahoo! looking to sell or shut down Flickr because it is not making money. No idea if/when this will happen...

Cloud storage is the way to go. I have had 2 different external drives fail on me for different reasons. I was able to use a hard drive reader to get my photos off of one of them and, fortunately, I had a back up of the back up on the other. At one point I thought I had lost all of my DD's first communion pics but, I had shared them with a relative via Shutterfly and was pleasantly surprised to find them still available on that site.

Precisely why I don't keep all my eggs in one basket, I am looking to find one more online service that is reasonably priced that offers completely unlimited storage that will accept Raw Images as well. Preferably one that I can copy files from my Amazon Cloud Drive to without needing to download any of the files to my computer first.

Again, I don't want to limit myself to just one service in case something happens to one of them, it is the equivalent of using multiple hard drives.

 

[cmwade77]

That's too bad about Flickr. I hope nothing happens to it. Thanks for the heads up though.

I appreciate everyone's thoughts on this. I ordered 2 more hard drives. I think at this point I'm looking to have 2 complete sets of backups (so 3 sets). I just need some quality time now with the computer to organize and start copying again. I'm going to putz around with the problem drive too and see if I can figure out if it was a shortage of USB power. If I think that was the issue, I might continue to use it as a second backup.

I'm appreciating the discussion of cloud storage. For those of you using such a service, can you share what it costs? And I guess more importantly, can I store RAW files there?

Sharona, I'm so glad you didn't lose the First Communion photos. That would be awful.

I do print a fair number of photos for my scrapbooks, but would sure hate to have those as my only versions.

So with Amazon Cloud Drive, there are a few choices:

• Unlimited Photos - $11.99 per year or free with Amazon Prime
  • This gives you completely unlimited photo storage and 5 GB for all other file types.
  • On this plan, RAW photos are allowed as part of the unlimited portion only if Amazon recognizes your camera's raw photos as photos.
• Unlimited Everything - $59.99 per month (although there are often deals, such as $45 a year or free 6 months when you spend $20 on Amazon, etc.)
  • This plan offers "unlimited" everything, which means all of the photos and videos you want can be stored here as well. And of course you can store RAW photos here, even if they aren't recognized by Amazon as photos yet. If they are recognized by Amazon, you can even do some minimal non-destructive editing on Amazon directly.
  • Please note that I put unlimited in quotes because there are restrictions, for example, you are not supposed to use it as a file sharing site and if you have way too much data they reserve the right to say something, but I am in the multiple TB range and no issues so far, I think it's just a standard disclaimer.

As for printing, there are numerous services that are reasonably priced that can connect directly to Amazon Cloud Drive and print from there.

 

[suebecdan]

We use SMugmug and we love it. Youa re able to upload hi resolution images and videos. You can choose to share your albums if you want. They also have an app that automatically uploads smart phone to their site. It also allowes you to always have your pictures wiht you. they have an app that is a viewer which is fun. you can also download your images one or an entire folder. i pay 60 a year for the service.

 

[barbaraann]

We use SMugmug and we love it. Youa re able to upload hi resolution images and videos. You can choose to share your albums if you want. They also have an app that automatically uploads smart phone to their site. It also allowes you to always have your pictures wiht you. they have an app that is a viewer which is fun. you can also download your images one or an entire folder. i pay 60 a year for the service.

I subscribed to SmugMug yesterday. Thanks for the info. So far, I am liking it. I think that it will suit my needs for the amount of photos that I have.

 

[suebecdan]

I subscribed to SmugMug yesterday. Thanks for the info. So far, I am liking it. I think that it will suit my needs for the amount of photos that I have.

If you have any question let me know. Ihave over 80,000 pictures on smugmug there is no limit. You can also use their printing service. I haven't but Ihave heard good things about it. Have fun uploading!

 

[barbaraann]

If you have any question let me know. Ihave over 80,000 pictures on smugmug there is no limit. You can also use their printing service. I haven't but Ihave heard good things about it. Have fun uploading!

So far, I am doing pretty well. I have discovered that I have an excessive amount of duplicates in my folders on my present external hard drive. Once I begin to eliminate those, I can get much better organized. I even loaded the mobile app, and did a test run of downloading some pics off my iPhone. That went very well. I am liking the entire process so far.

I decided to do my family pics first, and when that huge project is done, then I can begin to work on my vacation pics. I have a huge amount of those.

80,000 is a lot. I'm not sure how many I have on my external drive, but when I get rid of the duplicates the number will be much lower, I am sure.

 

[bob100]

That's too bad about Flickr. I hope nothing happens to it. Thanks for the heads up though.

.

Don't believe everything you read on camera forums!
I don't believe Flickr is going away anytime soon
I'll still storing backup pics on my $39 Passport Terabyte drive (along with the same pics on flickr and other computers, etc.
But I am starting to think about the reason for storing RAW files of my flowers, landscapes and 000's of misc non-family photos. I think a lot of stuff may not be worth paying $$ to the "cloud" to store old photos

 

[sharona]

Don't believe everything you read on camera forums!
I don't believe Flickr is going away anytime soon
I'll still storing backup pics on my $39 Passport Terabyte drive (along with the same pics on flickr and other computers, etc.
But I am starting to think about the reason for storing RAW files of my flowers, landscapes and 000's of misc non-family photos. I think a lot of stuff may not be worth paying $$ to the "cloud" to store old photos

Yes, it is just a rumor about Flickr and I hope it's not true as I enjoy Flickr a lot!! They did just make auto-uploader a "pro" only service and there is a 30% discount to "go pro" so looks like they are trying to monetize... There's an interesting article here: http://gizmodo.com/5910223/how-yahoo-killed-flickr-and-lost-the-internet WARNING there is some unnecessary foul language in the article but it is otherwise a good read on the subject of corporate culture invading/ruining the creativity of start ups

For back-up/storage I agree with you - my main concerns are family photos, vacation photos, my best/favorite landscapes/artsy stuff then everything else which is not worth backing up. Do I really need 50 different shots of tulips that I took over the past few years? No. I just want the ones that I really love best, same goes for most of my non family stuff.

 

[cmwade77]

We use SMugmug and we love it. Youa re able to upload hi resolution images and videos. You can choose to share your albums if you want. They also have an app that automatically uploads smart phone to their site. It also allowes you to always have your pictures wiht you. they have an app that is a viewer which is fun. you can also download your images one or an entire folder. i pay 60 a year for the service.

My problem with Smugmug is they don't allow raw photos as part of the unlimited storage.

 

[xlxo]

There's an interesting article here: http://gizmodo.com/5910223/how-yahoo-killed-flickr-and-lost-the-internet

Hmm..... that article is FOUR years old!

 

[sharona]

Hmm..... that article is FOUR years old!

Yes, the article is not directly related to the current Flickr rumors other than that it goes a long way toward understanding why Yahoo! may have missed the boat on realizing Flickr's full potential...