walter628 Loc: tahlequah, ok

I would like to upload photos to a cloud for a safe, secure way to preserve photos. I am looking recommendations. I would prefer something simple. I want unlimited storage. I have looked at several and am still looking. Please help.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Check out Carbonite. I have unlimited for one computer. So anything I want backed up to the cloud from either laptop I copy to the desktop. It also puts little colored bullets next to the file (in Windows Explorer) to indicate the backup status. You can also add directories to the "standard" backup list, and request that a file be backed up now. I've been using it for years.

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

Be sure to include a couple of external drive devices in different locations for peace of mind. Clouds can evaporate in mysterious ways.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Backup: short term storage of files you expect to be using frequently in the immediate future
Archive: long term storage of files you don't expect to use in the immediate future, but expect to use in the more distant future.

Backup is probably best done locally since you don't have to deal with bandwidth issues.

Archive should be done on a multi-level system. Preferably with different media. Redundancy is good, i.e. you should make two or more copies of everything in different places. For example, an external hard drive attached to your computer is convenient. An external hard drive synchronized with the one on your computer but stored elsewhere in your house guards against your computer catching fire and destroying itself and the hard drive connected to it. An external hard drive synchronized with the one on your computer but stored off-site somewhere guards against your house burning down and destroying all your local drives. Online storage guards against problems with one or more of your other archival drives.

Many people prefer to use external hard drives. They're a one-time expense, not all that expensive. They are under your control. Reliability is pretty good, and improved if you use several of them as described above. But they do fail occasionally (another reason for redundancy). If you kick off, your archives will probably survive you.

Many people prefer online storage. The cloud facilities have more reliability built in because they're maintained better than the average home drive. They have a fee for usage. For some of them, the fee is reasonable, and for some the fee is significantly larger than the cost of local hard drives. If you kick off, you stop paying the fee and your archives will probably not survive you for long. You have no control over a cloud company that folds.

I use a three-drive local system plus a cloud system. I try to do at least minimal maintenance on my drives. When I synchronize my drives, I rotate them. The one on the computer goes to the off-site storage. The off-site storage drive goes to the elsewhere in the house storage. and the elsewhere in the house drive goes to the computer. That way all the drives get 2 periods of inactivity and 1 period of usage. That should keep the bearings from freezing up in constant storage. I don't have statistics on mean failure times for external hard drives. In 15 years I have had one fail out of about 12. (One other became unusable because the power supply with a nonstandard connector got lost in a move).

throughrhettseyes Loc: Rowlett, TX

I don't trust anyone with my data. Get a couple of external HDs and be happy. You can get a 4tb for less than $100 now. Also add one or two internal drives to your computer too. And... you have no monthly fee and strangers looking at your data.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Throughrhettseyes talks about data. That brings up a good point. When talking about backup/archive we should be talking about data, not photos. You should be preserving everything, not just your photos. You should include your emails, your program profiles and incidental data, your word processing files, etc.

Everything.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

Exactly. There should also be an off-site backup, in case the house burns or blows away. I use CrashPlan for that and couldn't be happier. It just works.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

BackBlaze is10/mo and unlimited storage

toxdoc42

And Carbonite does it automatically, as long as everything is in the users directory! For a few bucks more, you can also back up an external drive.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

You want a major cloud provider for financial stability and multiple locations (so there are multiple copies of your data at different physical locations in the event of disaster). Your first choice is Amazon S3. Amazon owns the cloud storage business with as much storage and market share as the next 4-5 providers combined. They have multiple levels of storage with different pricing depending on how often you need to access your data. Other major providers include Google, Microsoft, Apple and IBM. Backblaze is OK (and publishes good disk reliability data), but has the caveat that they use consumer class rather than enterprise class drives. Ignore the warnings about not ‘controlling your data”, hackers, and major providers going belly up - not credible. By the same token, an external $100 drive (even if you actually regularly store a copy off-site) is orders of magnitude less reliable than the cloud. For best protection, keep three copies - a working copy, a local backup or mirror and an off-site DR (disaster recovery) copy.

aellman Loc: Boston MA

CARBONITE !!!!!

ToBoldlyGo Loc: London U.K.

It's worth considering what may happen to your photos if something happens to your house though. Just a thought.

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

Cloud storage isn't as safe as they would like you to believe. If you fail to pay your subscription, it goes away. If they have a technical error, it goes away. There are many things beyond your control that you are depending on them for. AND, you are believing that if you have that great one of a kind shot, that some employee of the "cloud" won't steal it. Personally, while I have the Adobe Cloud (mainly because I am an Adobe subscriber).. the ONLY thing I use it for is to share an image to a customer without emailing it. I have USB3 portable drives, and a couple of SAT3 4tb drives that I use for backups and I have a WD Cloud which sits in my garage and I maintain complete physical control over. With other clouds, you are betting that all of their employees are honest or that you will never have anything on it worth stealing.

wteffey Loc: Ocala, FL USA

Even at $120 a year, Amazon Prime offers a good value with unlimited photo storage, plus all the other benefits of Amazon Prime. Although I have another on-line backup and an external hard drive, I load internet sized photos to Amazon so they can be shared with friends on their devices, phones and tablets.