Vault Loc: Gig Harbor, WA and Yuma, AZ

Since I have only been part of this great web sight less than a year I am not sure how much this topic has been discussed. I have for years saved all of my shots on DVDs along with portable hard drives. Now that I am taking more than just family and vacation shots is the "cloud" worth the time and investment? Nikon is offering an unlimited space with their Nikon Image Space. Does anyone use this? If so, how fast is it, do you back up your back up and if Nikon does dissolve into financial melt down will my memories be accessible? I am not a pro and I do not make money on my clicks but I have been shooting some nice imagery lately and hope to keep improving. We do travel a great deal and I want to continue to save what we see. Thank you. Lastly, has anybody used Nixplay?

(Download)


(Download)

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Investment? More like insurance.

If my house were to be flooded or burn down and we loose everything in it (images, documents, program code,...) that is local to my PC/office, the cloud is my disaster recovery archive. It is not working storage.

Another option, which many utilize, is backing everything up to an external drive and storing that backup drive someplace outside of the home. - Safe deposit box, brother's house, kid's house, neighbor's house, ...

As for time, the company I use automatically backs up files shortly after I create or alter them, transparent to me. The initial backup will take a while though.

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

The real question here is: "How much are your images worth to you? To your family?"

You insure your car against damage and theft. (Most states require it in order to register the vehicle).
You insure your home against damage and theft. (Most mortgage companies require it).
You insure your health against catastrophic diseases or accidents.

All those things have value to you. What about your photos?

I am definitely not of the persuasion that my photos have any monetary value. There are some, however, that have value to me and/or my family. I want to protect them. I spend a bit over $100/year for software to polish my photos. That amount is a small price to pay for a hobby. I can certainly add another $100 or thereabouts to protect my images to preserve them for the future. Financially I am able to support that kind of expenditure. I recognize that I am lucky and the expenditure of that money will not make me miss any meals, no matter how much it might benefit me to miss a meal now and then. Others may not be so lucky.

The decision is up to you.

And to repeat what has been said about backup many times, many places:

Backup (archive) requires (at least) three things: Duplication, Distribution, and Maintenance.
You need several copies of your backup (Duplication). That ensures that if one backup medium fails there is another that can take up the slack.
You need the backup to be in several places (Distribution). That way if a meteor makes a crater where your house was, there is a backup somewhere else that you can use.
You need to keep up with technology. Backup media do not last forever. The Mean Time Between Failures of your storage medium is important, so the medium has to be replaced occasionally to avoid that problem.

Cloud storage addresses all three of those things.
Cloud storage has the disadvantage that it is bandwidth limited. It will take a long time to restore ALL your files.
Local storage has the advantage that it has a high bandwidth available. Much quicker to restore your files from a local disk.
Local storage has the disadvantage that YOU have to do the maintenance. Cloud storage takes care of that. Maintenance is done by professionals.

Local storage is your prime backup. Cloud storage is your backup backup.

And on the subject of media, DVDs are deprecated as a backup medium. Their lifetime may or may not be long. They are inconsistent there.

jdtonkinson Loc: Red Wing, MN

I have Amazon prime, so I get unlimited photo storage with them. I upload all my images after taking them to Amazon, so I can retrieve them if needed.
I also have 2 local storage devices for backup.

Vault Loc: Gig Harbor, WA and Yuma, AZ

Great points.

Vault Loc: Gig Harbor, WA and Yuma, AZ

Best point I have heard is Back up to the back up. Thank you.

Vault Loc: Gig Harbor, WA and Yuma, AZ

Excellent reply. Thank you.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

I also save (backup) all my .doc, .pdf, .xls, receipts, etc. files.
Some of those places only let you save image files.
My documents are just as important to backup.

Papa j Loc: Cary NC

What company do you use

J

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Carbonite.
It takes a while to get everything up there initially, but a bit after files are modified or saved, they get backed up fairly quickly. One can always request "Back this file up ASAP", and it will.
ANY extension can be backed up, not just images.

whitehall Loc: Canada

Could you please expand on uploading to Amazon? Is that done in conjunction with Lightroom? Thanks

Jodevoy

I have been wondering about Amazon cloud services, too. I am interested in whatever experience UHH users have with it. Is it easy to use? I am thinking in terms of long term, archive storage not routine backup.
Thanks!

ColonelButler Loc: Niagara-on-the-Lake ON Canada

One thing to consider is how long it would take to recover your files from your cloud service. Backblaze provides a recovery service where they will provide you a copy of your files on a hard drive that would be much faster to restore especially if you have terabytes of images.

Gort55 Loc: Northern Colorado

When the wildfires were headed this direction last year, I realized that backing up to DVDs and external drives wasn't enough, so I signed up with iDrive. It took a long time to get it all up there on the cloud, but now it just writes new or changed files, and is pretty fast. I went folder by folder in the beginning instead of trying to do it all at once. Now my data and photos are backed up off-site. Whew!

Schoee Loc: Europe

I think you will find Nikon Image Space is only unlimited for SnapBridge enabled cameras saving their "web-ready" photos which are reduced size 2MB versions of your photo. For full photos I think you are limited to 20GB which is not a lot.
I use Microsoft OneDrive which is essentially free because it comes with Microsoft 365 (used to be Office) to which I subscribe. That gives me 1 TB (ie. 1000 GB) per user for max 6 users I think it is. I have folders on my hard drive which are automatically synchronised to OneDrive so as soon as I save a file to the hard drive folder it starts sending a copy to OneDrive which I can then access from anywhere but acts as my initial back up.
I am currently stuck away from home due to COVID travel problems so am using a laptop. I have a microSD card in the slot which I save to every few hours when working as an extra backup and then at the end of the day I connect an external HDD and save to that.
I think it you are going to use a cloud service you should stick to one of the big players, plenty of people on here will recommend one. I would look at Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Backblaze, Carbonite and see what you like.