Storage space for photo's

mollybird · 05-01-2015 09:44PM #1

Ive always been a keen photographer and have hundreds of photo's. My husband got me a DSLR camera last year so as you can imagine my photo's have doubled within the last year. So im quickly running out of space on my laptop for all the photo's im taking.

wondering if anyone would have any good suggestions on what would be the best place to store my hundreds of photo's. somewhere that would be handy that i could look at them if i ever wanted to or to copy over to something or to simply email to family and friends

thanks

Kenny Logins · 05-01-2015 09:52PM

Flickr is pretty good now that they give a huge amount of storage free. You can set albums to 'private'.

magicbastarder · 05-01-2015 10:14PM

what format are you storing your photos in?
reason i ask is that any reasonably modern laptop (i.e. less than four years old) should have plenty of space to store hundreds of photos - it's usually only when you run into thousands or tens of thousands that space starts to become an issue.

PLL · 05-01-2015 10:31PM

Get an external hardrive, e.g. http://www.currys.ie/product/seagate-expansion-sgr39201-portbl-hard-drive-1tb-black/315064/7.15.0

That is the one we have, I am actually adding more to it as we speak. It has 5 years worth of photos, videos, documents as well as about 100 movies and isn't even halfway full. Very handy and gives great peace of mind.

Alanstrainor · 05-01-2015 10:33PM

PLL wrote: »

Get an external hardrive, e.g. http://www.currys.ie/product/seagate-expansion-sgr39201-portbl-hard-drive-1tb-black/315064/7.15.0

That is the one we have, I am actually adding more to it as we speak. It has 5 years worth of photos, videos, documents as well as about 10 movies and isn't even halfway full. Very handy and gives great peace of mind.

Only if you have it stored in another location also, if you're not and the seagate dies you're stuffed. Really the answer is online backup, https://www.backblaze.com/ is cheap and unlimited, however it may take an age to do the initial sync.

pullandbang · 05-01-2015 10:45PM

PLL wrote: »

Get an external hardrive,

That is the one we have, I am actually adding more to it as we speak. It has 5 years worth of photos, videos, documents as well as about 100 movies and isn't even halfway full. Very handy and gives great peace of mind.

You really need to make a copy of that one because when it dies (and it will die) you've lost the lot.

magicbastarder · 05-01-2015 10:55PM

yep, an external harddrive is no more reliable than an internal one; it only provides peace of mind when used as a backup.

Alanstrainor · 05-01-2015 10:58PM

magicbastarder wrote: »

yep, an external harddrive is no more reliable than an internal one; it only provides peace of mind when used as a backup.

I would go further and say that they are more unreliable, especially the portable drives. They're generally not the same quality that finds their way into laptops, and they tend to get knocked around a lot more than any laptop would; thrown into bags, pockets etc.

Kenny Logins · 05-01-2015 11:10PM

Have to agree. I wouldn't trust any external HD after my WD crapped out taking all of my backups with it.

PLL · 05-01-2015 11:50PM

Alanstrainor wrote: »

Only if you have it stored in another location also, if you're not and the seagate dies you're stuffed. Really the answer is online backup, https://www.backblaze.com/ is cheap and unlimited, however it may take an age to do the initial sync.

It is backed up on dropbox too, I just meant for ease of use. I find it easier to search through things by just connecting the hard drive and copying them over. Online clouds wreck my heard. Personal preference though.

Wabbit Ears · 07-01-2015 03:25PM

OMG, My faith in humanity has been restored, The amount of times Ive had to explain ad-nauseum that a External hard drive is the singularly WORST possibly solution for data storage. Its, at best, a semi reliable backup soloution due to the fact that its a mechanical spinning disk in a very unstable and knockabble chassis. In the same vein of thinking a laptop or mobile phone is also a terrible place to store your only copy of photographs.

Safest drives are drives in a PC chassis, Raided or mirrored combines with off-site, usually online cloud backups of that data.

Pc chassis are sturdy, pretty immovable and pretty well surge protected. A surge protector is also a good and cheap investment.

Tiriel · 07-01-2015 03:38PM

At the moment I have 2 external drives. I use one day to day and on a monthly basis back it up.. wondering now what else I should be doing.

I've had 2 drives die in the past 3 years.. but have never lost very much as I've always had the backup relatively up to date. They are definitely not reliable and 2 is the very minimum you should have for storage.

bren2002 · 07-01-2015 05:46PM

I use backblaze and Google Drive. Although the only stuff I put on Google drive is photos of the kids.
The Mrs would kill me if I lost those. Phones I leave to OneDrive & iCloud.

Kenny Logins · 07-01-2015 05:53PM

I think I'm going to give Backblaze a go. Looks Good!

bren2002 · 07-01-2015 05:56PM

I'm a big fan of it, but it does take an age to do the initial sync. Also, be aware I once ran a Glary Utilities (or it might have been Norton) machine optimisation job on my PC and it turned off Backblaze. I didn't notice until they emailed me to say nothing had backed up for 2 weeks.

If you're into it, they've a very interesting blog on how they build and use their pods.

They have version control too, which is handy.

BionicRasher · 07-01-2015 06:15PM

I would definitely recommend Flickr and PickBackMan

I have an all photos that we have (as a family) on our PC
These are backed up to an external drive
This is then backed up to Flickr (incidentally I also back the photos up to Google+ as that’s a nice way to be able to get some cool effects such as Auto Awesome movies etc)

I used http://www.picbackman.com/ to do the initial sync and I pay $2.49 a month for the Premium account – its great for keeping things in sync across various services.

Here is what we do
• We have 3 smart phones in the house and these all have an app installed that syncs any photos taken to a folder on our shared PC. (the app runs in the background and once it detects new photos it uploads them to the PC over WiFi.)
• We also plug in our main cameras (we have 2 semi decent cameras) and upload photos from them to the same folder on the PC
• I have set up a nightly automatic task that monitors this folder on the PC and copies any new photos to the external drive
• The folder on the PC is also monitored by PicBackMan and that backs up a copy to Flickr and also to Google+

We can then all see the photos online anytime through either Flickr or Google+. We can cast them to the main TV trough Chromecast and we like to have slideshows running on the TV sometimes and it’s a great conversation starter when we have friends and family visit.

I have chosen Flickr as my recommendation as its free and offers 1TB of storage. Also I would highly recommend PickBackMan as it works flawlessly

mollybird · 07-01-2015 08:37PM

Thanks everyone for the replies. Im actually on flickr so could possibly go down that route but could take a week or two possibly to get all my photo's on there. ive only a smallish selection on there at the min.

Slidinginfinity · 08-01-2015 08:38AM

Flickr is fine and all but, do get and external drive, they don't cost much much and can keeps you in possession of your own. I currently have three.

As for backup/disaster plan I currently use CrashPlan. For free you can back up to an external drive, another of your computers, or a computer at a friends/family members place. For a small annual fee you can also back up to their cloud storage.

adox · 08-01-2015 08:54AM

Flickr is grand and all but I wouldn't be relying on it as an only source of backup. Lets remember its a photo hosting site first, meant for sharing and offers 1TB of free storage. Their priority and business model doesn't have the safety of your data at the top of their list.

Also if you add a watermark to any of your public images remember to put up another copy un-watermarked and mark private. If you need to download one of the public images the watermark will remain.

I think Im going to give backblaze a go. Sounds like a good solution. Am I right in thinking its like a mirrored back up service, so basically it keeps your back up up to date with your hard drive and the changes you make to it, be it adding or deleting, and not a archive type service where you can go back and retrieve old files that have been deleted?

BionicRasher · 08-01-2015 10:52AM

mollybird wrote: »

wondering if anyone would have any good suggestions on what would be the best place to store my hundreds of photo's. somewhere that would be handy that i could look at them if i ever wanted to or to copy over to something or to simply email to family and friends

thanks

As per the OP Flickr fits the bill perfectly. Google+ is also a good fit.
Flickr is available on all major systems from mobile to PC and Mac etc. It hasan unbeatable 1TB if free storage.
PicBackMan is the ideal tool to get the photos synced from various places to either Flickr or Google+
As for a pure backup solution then that's a different conversation. You should always have your photos backed up locally and to a cloud location.

Cameraman · 13-01-2015 07:37PM

I'd recommend a site like Crashplan, rather than Backblaze for this reason :

(from the Backblaze FAQ)
"If the drive is detached for more than 30 days, Backblaze interprets this as data that has been permanently deleted and securely deletes the copy from the Backblaze datacenter."

This would apply to external drives.
Crashplan can be configured to not do this. Also, you can use Crashplan to backup to a remote computer (e.g. a friend) - even on the free version.

fret_wimp2 · 14-01-2015 11:21AM

This is something that ive been bashing my head against for years and i finally have a solution im almost happy with.

1. Store your pictures on your pc, where you can easily find them. otherwise they will just sit on a drive, in a drawer somewhere, where you never look at them. want proof, how often do you take out your old physical photos to look at? Never.. because they are safely out of reach in a press or in the attic.

2. Back them up, back them up , back them up!. For years I had my photos on my computer. I had 2 external drives that i copied my photos directory to each month. One of the drives lived in my drawer, the other in my office, away from my house. Worked well when i remembered to actually do the backing up.

Now i use ZipCloud. ZipCloud provide me with about 300GB of online "cloud" storage. They provided a windows program and service that monitors my photos directory and automatically backs up any new/changed items. They charge extra for backing up external drives and stuff but are very flexible on price.
This makes sure I dont lose photos if i forget my monthly backup routine.

3. Viewing regularly. Hard to say as we dont know what formats you're using and what you mean by "viewing". If by viewing you mean simply seeing them regularly, convert them all to jpeg, put them on a drive , plug it into your tv and watch the slideshow, or get one of those electronic picture frames. If you mean regularly browsing them then there are tons of free programs out there for simple image viewing. I use lightroom to organize and edit my photos. Its worth every cent.

The J Stands for Jay · 14-01-2015 01:18PM

I have all my files (raw and jpg) on my PC. Am external HDD is plugged in which runs windows backup or some such. I have manually backed up all my photos (again raw and jpg) to Google drive and my favourite ones across various free online services using jolicloud. Dropboz looks after Any pictures on my phone.

denismc · 15-01-2015 08:56AM

Just a note for anyone considering cloud backup, I signed up to backblaze last week and was told my initial backup would take over 100 days:eek:

So if you are on a slow internet connection with a lot of files you may want to consider something else. BTW I have about 200gb of files to backup.

adox · 15-01-2015 10:50AM

denismc wrote: »

Just a note for anyone considering cloud backup, I signed up to backblaze last week and was told my initial backup would take over 100 days:eek:

So if you are on a slow internet connection with a lot of files you may want to consider something else. BTW I have about 200gb of files to backup.

What sort of upload speed do you have on your line?

I`m considering backblaze and would have about 450GB to upload.

denismc · 15-01-2015 10:57AM

adox wrote: »

What sort of upload speed do you have on your line?

I`m considering backblaze and would have about 450GB to upload.

I have upto 8mb download and 0.12mb/s upload, the upload speed is the important one. Having fibre broadband should improve this greatly, at work we have 21mb/s upload speed which is over 100 times faster.

surpy · 15-01-2015 11:02AM

google+ will give you unlimited storage if you allow them to resize your photos (heresy around these parts I'm sure, but a free backup is a free backup!)
the only problem i had with it is that its very hard to browse large amounts of photos. but they do offer a 1 click download of all files if you ever need to recover everything at once

i used to use it in addition to local copies but ended up paying from dropbox pro as i can link it from so many devices.

fret_wimp2 · 15-01-2015 11:03AM

denismc wrote: »

Just a note for anyone considering cloud backup, I signed up to backblaze last week and was told my initial backup would take over 100 days:eek:

So if you are on a slow internet connection with a lot of files you may want to consider something else. BTW I have about 200gb of files to backup.

Im on UPC and backup of 180GB took just under 2 days. ( I just left it running over the weekend and it was done when i checked on sunday night).

surpy wrote: »

google+ will give you unlimited storage if you allow them to resize your photos (heresy around these parts I'm sure, but a free backup is a free backup!)

Free is not free in this case. Like leaving your Ferrari in for a free service and getting back a fully working golf.

Alanstrainor · 15-01-2015 11:06AM

denismc wrote: »

I have upto 8mb download and 0.12mb/s upload, the upload speed is the important one. Having fibre broadband should improve this greatly, at work we have 21mb/s upload speed which is over 100 times faster.

Unfortunately you're stuffed not matter what Cloud backup service you use in that case. Backblaze is good, and reliable though, and not terribly expensive! You just need to have the bandwidth handle any cloud backup solution.

adox · 15-01-2015 12:17PM

denismc wrote: »

I have upto 8mb download and 0.12mb/s upload, the upload speed is the important one. Having fibre broadband should improve this greatly, at work we have 21mb/s upload speed which is over 100 times faster.

Cheers. I have fibre and get about 14mb upload. It will probably still take a few days but once it doesnt hog everything I`m fine with that.

Alanstrainor · 16-01-2015 03:04PM

adox wrote: »

Cheers. I have fibre and get about 14mb upload. It will probably still take a few days but once it doesnt hog everything I`m fine with that.

You can throttle the upload so it doesn't eat it all. But for starts it might be an idea to give it as much as possible.

Storage space for photo's

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