chrissybabe Loc: New Zealand

Let me see now. Earthquake takes out the power grid - local, state, even the dam - generation, distribution for possibly weeks at a time. Same applies to floods etc. And since the data is actually stored across the country the potential for this happening is vast.
Then we have bankruptcy, terroism, vandalism by Luddites, eventually being charged for your current free service, data theft (they might not want your data but you could be affected by collateral damage), fire in the storage facility, AC out in the storage facility, issues with the storage facilities backups (for every terabyte of staorage they also need another terabyte for backups - assuming they have this - have you checked or just taken their word for it).
And all this depends upon where you live. If in an apartment building then online storage might be valid and possibly your only option.
So really any disaster that might affect a home dweller can also affect a storage facility.

Have you checked your ancestors - it might be a fair bet that one of them was involved with the design of the Titanic !

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Major cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. keep 3-5 copies of your data at widely seperate geographic sites to protect against this exact issue. Each site has Redundant power, servers, networking and of course storage. So which do you believe would be safer? One (usually consumer class) drive administered by the photographer, rarely if ever tested, sitting at a relative’s house, in a shed or in a bank within a few miles of the primary storage and MAYBE updated regularly, or multiple encrypted copies of your data at widely seperate geographic locations, in hardenened, redundant professionally managed data centers?

Then, in regards to security, ask yourself what hackers are looking for - credit card information, SSNs, etc in nice neat databases, or sorting through 10,000 personal photographs per user? Guess who uses a cloud for storage? The CIA, NSA, and DOD, who are the most security conscious people I know. You can make your own choice, but you should know the facts rather than rely on conjecture and fear mongering.

chrissybabe Loc: New Zealand

I bet they don't. So you are saying that if you want to store 1 TB data the storage providers will have a total of 5TB of storage to provide sufficient backup for multiple redundancy. I doubt that. This is a huge amount of capacity. They 'might' do it for the govt agencies you mentioned but the average plod on the streets no way.
Including my wifes storage we would need something like 14TB x 4 (original + 4 backup copies) of online storage = 56TB. It would cost a fortune in fees per year for this online and that is one person. It wasn't cheap to do it ourselves at home (including the offsite copy).
I forgot to mention in my previous diatribe about what happens with online storage and there is a major disaster. Have you ever wondered just how long it might take to get your data back when the internet has slowed down tremendously but you have possibly 5 million people all trying to download 4TB of files each within a few days ? That is disaster recovery. And the way our society is setup we cannot even help a few thousand people. Your data 'might' be protected but I doubt whether you will be getting access any time soon. So probably your personal 'disaster' might be recoverable but I seriously doubt a states 'disaster' will be. If I lived in the US in California and the San Adreas fault did a major slip I think my local backups would be far safer and accessible than online storage. I could be wrong of course and if something like this happens I will find out fairly quickly.
When I was in business maintaining networks a new customer (as a result of their backup system failing) used online storage. I think they had 1.5TB worth. The backup company was actually English based and as far as I could tell the customers storage was in England. Stuff happened and they needed to do a restore and the online backup was all they had. Then they found that the backups hadn't been happening for 18 months plus downloading and restoring the older data also took a couple of days. A huge nightmare.
A lot of the issues with local verse online storage depends on so many things. My own circumstances are probably different than yours (meaning any other UHHer) but the only way I would lose all my data would be if the entire island (South Island NZ) slid under water and if this happened I basically don't care about my data. We don't have hurricanes like in the US. My property is far enough on higher ground that tsunamis are not a problem, same applies to a sea level change. So individual circumstances will affect what choices you make. Individual priorities also come into this. I know people who will spend $10,000 on an overseas holiday but will quibble over spending $100 on a backup drive. I have no sympathy for them of course.
So online storage can be useful in some circumstances but it is not the panacea that some people make it out to be.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

With due respect, you are mistaken (and please note that I said 3-5 copies). Without trotting out all my credentials, let me just say that I have designed, sold and installed storage for almost 30 years for the largest storage companies in existence (IBM, EMC, NetApp, DDN, Oracle...). That includes enterprise customers of every ilk and every military, Intel, supercomputing and defense contractor you can think up; and one of those companies was a global file system company (Panzura) that relied on the cloud, so I know cloud providers like Amazon and Google intimately. I know exactly how many copies they keep and where, because we had to calculate the latency from the customers to the storage site. I have been in their facilities, and I know exactly where, how, and the number of copies they keep of your data. Btw, whether they keep 3,4 or 5 copies depends on the level of service you buy, but it is never less than 3 with the companies I have mentioned. Now if you pick a smaller company, then they may keep just one, which is why you should choose a MAJOR cloud provider.

If we have a worldwide or country wide disaster, it won’t matter, because your photos will be the least of your issues, but for an individual’s working data loss, which is what we’re talking about here, I will restate it: you cannot possibly create a DR site as good as a major cloud provider, and trying to scare people away with security issues or personal control of your data is not doing anyone any favors. Just ask the user whose HD just crashed (a weekly occurrence on UHH) if they wish they had a DR copy, and then ask those that did and had good backup and DR if they’re glad they did. ‘Nuff said...

chrissybabe Loc: New Zealand

Maybe. However the OP was talking about his photos and if he had a second copy of that disk we probably wouldn't even be having any of this discussion.
I think you would find that most UHHers, when they backup, backup their data and photos at the same time. I do. A commercial organisation (as long as they aren't into anything that requires a ton of images) only has to store data and online might be more suited to them.
If you start to split data and photos apart and pick options that suit each of these better, and that are more applicable to home users then it won't happen. The bane of my business, which involved home users and small business's was owners who nodded their heads yes when backups were discussed but 3 months later were found to not be implementing what I had set up. Large companies have staff who make sure that backups happen, individuals basically don't want to know. So it must be invisible to them and that costs some money. Relying on online exclusively isn't the way to go unless you have someone monitoring this.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

No need to monitor. If you use an automatic backup system that copies new files and changes to the cloud, then you never have to worry about “user failure”. For example, my Apple devices backup automatically to ICloud, and I have an ap that automatically backs up my PCs to Amazon S3 cloud. Just not that hard.

aellman Loc: Boston MA

Agreed, but there are honest disagreements too. Not to differ with your opinion of cloud backup. You are 100% bright. I wouldn't be without it.