Photo/video storage options

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Plan4tomorrow
Posts: 22
Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2013 8:03 am

Photo/video storage options

Post by Plan4tomorrow »

My young family has quickly accumulated thousands of digital photos and videos. Roughly 30k photos and 4K videos

It has been a great way to capture memories but I’m starting to get anxious about the possibility of losing what we have

We have iPhones and a Mac. Right now we sync our phones with our Mac to back up pictures and videos. We’ve only used up about half of the storage on our Mac. I despise our Mac computer and the application where our photos are stored but we love the iPhones. Our next home computer will definitely be a windows based PC.

My questions for the group are what service do you use to manage family pictures and videos? Would you recommend it and why?

Thanks very much
Last edited by Plan4tomorrow on Tue Mar 05, 2019 9:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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fortfun
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Re: Photo/video storage options

Post by fortfun »

Plan4tomorrow wrote: Tue Mar 05, 2019 9:18 pm My young family has quickly accumulated thousands of digital photos and videos. Roughly 30k photos and 4K videos

It has been a great way to capture memories but I’m starting to get anxious about the possibility of losing what we have

We have iPhones and a Mac. Right now we sync our phones with our Mac to back up pictures and videos. We’ve only used up about half of the storage of on our Mac. I despise our Mac computer and the application where our photos are stored but we love the iPhones. Our next home computer will definitely be a windows based PC.

My questions for the group are what service do you use to manage family pictures and videos? Would you recommend it and why?

Thanks very much
DW uses Shutterfly. We both use Google Photos for backup. I'm too cheap to buy more space so I just make a new account when one fills up (just add the next number to my username).
mattfr
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Location: France

Re: Photo/video storage options

Post by mattfr »

Great question! There have been some good discussions on this topic:

viewtopic.php?t=231899
viewtopic.php?t=214976
viewtopic.php?t=231045

If you're an Amazon Prime member, they offer free photo storage. Google also offers free photo storage but in reduced file sizes.

If privacy is a concern, other services offer encrypted backups of your entire computer.
stimulacra
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Re: Photo/video storage options

Post by stimulacra »

Get plenty of storage for your primary machine, a backup/data recovery system like Time Machine or CrashPlan and a method of archiving all of your photos (A/B external hard drives with one stored off site or A/B optical media with the one set stored offsite.

The above assumes that your primary drive will eventually fail (it will) and that one set of archive will either fair or be destroyed.

Cloud photo storage options exist but the service provider can change the terms of service at a whim (i.e. Flickr).

Usually I'll archive all of the RAW photos taken and only keep the selects or “keepers” on my primary drive.

Re-evaluate your system and workflow every 5-10 years. Technology changes and formats become obsolete.
bloom2708
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Re: Photo/video storage options

Post by bloom2708 »

From another thread.

When you have an Office 365 Home subscription (~$99 for a year), you get 6 accounts/email addresses. Each comes with 1 TB of OneDrive space.

Amazon has cloud storage. Google. Microsoft. Free space and amounts vary. Not saying you should get Office 365, but most need some tools like that and the 1TB space for 6 people (parents, brother, sister, multiple pc) are a nice perk.

I have 2 USB drives that I back our photos/videos up on. I keep one in our safe. OneDrive is another backup location we use. Accessible on iPhone or Android. Same for Google on iPhone.
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LadyGeek
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Re: Photo/video storage options

Post by LadyGeek »

This thread is now in the Personal Consumer Issues forum (photo storage).
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tibbitts
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Re: Photo/video storage options

Post by tibbitts »

I don't use a "service" I just use external drives and rotate them between locations. I have three of these drives plus one that is larger (non-portable) and stationary that I leave at home connected to a computer at all times. Your options for online/cloud remote storage somewhat depend on your bandwidth.
TN_Boy
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Re: Photo/video storage options

Post by TN_Boy »

Plan4tomorrow wrote: Tue Mar 05, 2019 9:18 pm My young family has quickly accumulated thousands of digital photos and videos. Roughly 30k photos and 4K videos

It has been a great way to capture memories but I’m starting to get anxious about the possibility of losing what we have

We have iPhones and a Mac. Right now we sync our phones with our Mac to back up pictures and videos. We’ve only used up about half of the storage on our Mac. I despise our Mac computer and the application where our photos are stored but we love the iPhones. Our next home computer will definitely be a windows based PC.

My questions for the group are what service do you use to manage family pictures and videos? Would you recommend it and why?

Thanks very much
As noted, not a new topic!

To manage photos on the local hard drive, I use lightroom (photos copied from an SD card). Beyond that, my favorite pictures from vacations and such will be published to flickr albums, which can be shared with others. But most casual photographers aren't going to want to mess with lightroom.

On your existing mac, you can import photos from the phones into the "iPhoto" app. Is iPhoto the mac app you don't like? If so, what don't you like about it? What do you want in a local photo manager? Just organize the pictures for you and your family? Have a way to share some of them? Something else?

On Windows (which you don't have yet) it looks like you can import photos from the iphone to the "Photos" app. (I have not used this app myself, but it's an option).

For backup, I use crashplan to backup all my files (not just photos) of interest to "the cloud". And (because I have a mac, which unlike you I like) I use TimeMachine for a local backup of all files to an separate hard drive.

The key thing to notice is that I have
1) an app on the computer to organize photos on the local hard drive (this is for me and the spouse, to edit and view pictures), and
2) I have a backup strategy (not just for photos), and
3) A third, slightly more subtle point is that in addition to 1), I use a photo sharing service (flickr) to organize photos I wish to show other people.
(Other people don't want to see ALL my pictures ...). Only a fraction of the pictures I take are uploaded to flickr albums.

Thus three different problems being solved. 2) is critical and the heart of your question; you really want some sort of cloud backup to cover major disasters like the house burning down, or minor ones like someone breaking in and making off with your home computer (and attached disk drives).

I think options like google photos solve 2) and 3) for you at the same time.
runner3081
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Re: Photo/video storage options

Post by runner3081 »

Plan4tomorrow wrote: Tue Mar 05, 2019 9:18 pm My young family has quickly accumulated thousands of digital photos and videos. Roughly 30k photos and 4K videos
To be honest. I would think about purging. Sure pictures are great, but do you think anyone, years from now will care whether there are 1K or 40K photos?

I started doing this without photos, looking back after years, so many unnecessary photos to keep.

This will also keep any potential storage costs down and allow backup to multiple places, cheaply.

I back them up to OneDrive and Dropbox.
fourwheelcycle
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Re: Photo/video storage options

Post by fourwheelcycle »

mattfr wrote: Tue Mar 05, 2019 9:22 pm If privacy is a concern, other services offer encrypted backups of your entire computer.
I use Sync.com. For $49/yr for 500GB or $96/yr for 2TB they will keep up to five computers in your home perfectly synced with each other (for files you want to keep in sync), with a master copy of your Sync folder in their fully encrypted and secure cloud server. Everything syncs immediately every time you create or save a file. Plus, they give you a Vault to store an unlimited amount of additional files or photos that are not synced.

Sync.com maintains previous versions of all synced files in your cloud Sync folder. If you purposely or accidentally delete a synced file on one of your computers, or if you just want to go back to a previous saved version, you can retrieve it from Sync.com a day, a week, or a month later.

Sync.com uses zero knowledge encryption, so your master password never leaves your computer.
shawcroft
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Photo/video storage options

Post by shawcroft »

stimulacra wrote: Tue Mar 05, 2019 9:25 pm Get plenty of storage for your primary machine, a backup/data recovery system like Time Machine or CrashPlan and a method of archiving all of your photos (A/B external hard drives with one stored off site or A/B optical media with the one set stored offsite.
Great suggestion. I would second the idea of "purging" photos and videos so you can fit the essential ones onto external drives- preferably solid state drives as the prices for them drop.
There is a LOT of work involved in keeping up with this stuff and it can quickly become daunting.
Shawcroft
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PalmQueen
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Re: Photo/video storage options

Post by PalmQueen »

Three things...

One:
I urge you to have your photos/videos automatically stored somewhere besides your phone and computer hard drive.

I use Google Photos so can give step-by-step for it:
Get a free Google account if you don't already have one
Install Google Drive/Photos on your Mac
Download Google Photos to your phones/tablets
Configure Google Photos so it automatically uploads phone photos to the cloud.
You'll be able to access the photos through your Google account from any device.

Once you have Google Photos, you can upload photos to it from pretty much anyplace - your computer, your tablet, you can even send friends and family links so and they can add photos directly from their phones, computers, etc.

Apple's iPhoto is already on your MAC and iPhones and will do the job. I like Google Photos because I my digital world crosses operating systems.

Two:
Keep your photo/video library on a separate external hard drive. This will free up space on your hard drive for other things and if you get a new computer you don't need to worry about moving the photo library to it. Just plug in the hard drive and you'll be all set.

Three:
Backup your MAC to an external hard drive. The Time Machine program included with their operating system works well for this.

With these three steps, your photo/video library will be in three places: The cloud plus two external hard drives.
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