bobalou Loc: 98225

I have been taking pictures for 15-20 years with my successive digital cameras (right now a Cannon 5GX) and my successive Android phones and Android tablets). On my Windows PC I have a 1TB hard drive (apparently 75% full), and I also have 1TB storage in Google Drive (98% full), and Google Photos. I also have a 4TB Seagate external backup drive (nearly 100% full). So I'm pretty much maxed out for storage. My problem: I think all the years of photos are scattered among all these places (i.e., not all in one place, so I can see what I have and can trim it down). As I understand it, pictures I've taken with my Android devices have synced automatically with Google Photos (and I guess also with Google Drive), and I think may also be on my PC's hard drive, too (hard to tell, because each place arranges them differently). Meanwhile, the pictures I've taken with my cameras have loaded onto my computer's hard drive. The problem I think I have is that I don't seem to have ALL photos, from ALL devices, listed ALL in one place (PC hard drive, Google cloud, etc). Any thought on this? Any easy way to bring everything together all in one place, so I can cull through them and get rid of stuff and re-organize the rest? Also, any way to gather together duplicates so I can get rid of most of them? Oh, I also have Elements 13 on my PC, but I haven't used it very much (haven't been able to figure it out), but maybe that's the road to a solution? I sorely need help!!

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Get yourself a 2 bay NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive connected to your network or something similar connected to an available USB port on your system. Get 2 ea 6 Tb drives designed for NAS duty. When you set it up, make it RAID Mirroring, the second drive is a mirror image of the first, so if one fails you have a backup that can be automatically rebuilt.

Then, start relocating everything on your system HD, Google Drive and Google Photos to this NAS storage device.

TBerwick Loc: Houston, Texas

NAS storage can be "sized" for your anticipated requirements. You are not limited to 6TB, depending on your budget. I have a Netgear enclosure that can take up to 4 SATA hard drives in a RAID5 configuration. If you have 4 drives in that environment, you get the total, combined storage of 3 drives as one drive maintains a parity bit which is used for data security and rebuilding. If you have 4 1TB drives, you have 3TB of total storage available, 2TB drives would provide you with 6TB total and so on. All drives need to be of the same size in that configuration but if any drive fails, you can easily replace it and never lose any data. However, a NAS should not be your only line of defense for data loss. An annual plan with a service such as Carbonite could also be employed that could keep a copy of the NAS, and other important computer files, so if a disaster occurred, you would not lose everything.

bobalou Loc: 98225

Whoa, this is way beyond my ability to comprehend. Here's what puzzles me: the hard drive on my computer is 1TB and the external Seagate is 4TB, and yet the Seagate today is 90% full. I assumes that means is hasn't been doing incremental backups, instead doing full ones, piling one on top of previous ones...right? And yet I've had the Seagate for a year and it's only recently that it became full. Maybe I should just get a larger Seagate, or maybe I could get a 2nd 4TB and daisy-chain the two together? But whatever I do to increase the backup drive space, does it just become storage for photos only, or everything on my computer and Google Drive (Word, Excel files, etc)? I'm confused more then ever now.

Linary Loc: UK

Your question wasn't ansered, so this short video goes some way to explain the difference between Google Drive and Google Photos.

http://thedroidguy.com/2018/03/google-photos-vs-google-drive-whats-difference-1076953

bobalou Loc: 98225

Thanks. That may have helped a bit. But my new phone, bought several months ago is a Pixel 2, and even though I buy extra Drive space for $1.99/month, I've maxed out that space and the next higher is something like $10/month. So even though I have a Pixel 2, with free unlimited storage, isn't that unlimited space just for photos made with that phone, not for the bulk of my legacy photos that were taken with other phones and cameras, and not for the many I now take with my Cannon? I sure exceeded the 15GB fast, and then had to spend the $1.99/month many months ago after I quickly exceeded the 15GB, and now they want even more money. Keep in mind that I also back up non-photo files to my Drive account.

gerdog

The automatic windows update can really use up space fast. I stopped using it, set up a separate folder for the stuff I really wanted to save with no duplication, and set up google drive to only back up stuff I put in that folder. As you can tell, it's going to take forever to go through all those gigabytes. I've gotten into a regular routine now where I place 1 month's pictures into its own folder (pics jan 2018 for example) so I can find what I want more easily.

Logan1949

Wow. The video explaining the difference between Google Drive and Google Photos says that Google Photos only saves up to 16 megapixels per photo! But all of my Sony cameras take pictures with 20 to 42 megapixels; so Google Pictures compresses all of the pictures it stores. I want to keep my original RAW and JPG files, as well as my expanded edits of 80 to 100 megapixels. I guess I will continue to keep them on my own external hard drives.

riderxlx Loc: DFW area Texas

If you have duplicate backups with no new info added, just deleted some of them and read up on how to set up the backup process so the drive will not fill up. Dude, 4T is a damn big drive and should hold a ton of photos and videos.

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

What will help you is a workflow. Each image you decide to keep must have a place to be stored. You should be intimate with that space, knowing exactly what is there, and what is not. Then, once comfortable with it, devise a backup regimen that will safeguard those images for you, in at least two other places.

I have never used Google Photos, so can't respond to your pointed question, but I would guess that Google Photos has an option that allows you to store those images on Google Drive, which I do use.