jeryh Loc: Oxfordshire UK

A very good site for cloud storage is www.500px.com. It costs nothing, and you can have a year's membership free. I will display all your photos
better than any other system, including flickr, and you also get to see the work of some truly good photographers. Perhaps you could give it a try ?

OnDSnap Loc: NE New Jersey

You should use a minimum of 3 external drives, I now use
(5)- 2 TB WD or Lacey drives....First I would never clutter my internal drives with date files...I leave them for programs and such....(which is a 4 drive 0+1 raid setup) as far as backing up, The first external, backs up daily, 2nd drive gets a copy, the 3rd drive is a weekly or should I say a full backup of the 1st drive, then removed and taken off site ea. week. Along with 2 others, all kept off site, those are rotated weekly as the full back up.
As far as what Ester said, the Cloud...you keep paying, and paying....and mark my words, down the road, at some point , they all (Carbonate, whoever) will start to charge you by data amounts to be recovered...heck, already certain companies (I won't mention) in a sense are holding your software hostage with the cloud...Give up the monthly fee using the cloud and you loose access to your software. Personally, I'd rather pay for my software and know I own it, and know my files are safe at my side...BTW, B&H sell 500GB WD (WD Elements SE) drives (great for traveling ) for $59 ....

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

I use external drives along with the cloud. Look up Jimmy Drive will backup all your internal and external drives ( no limit) at $6/month and if you call them you get a live person who will answer your questions http://www.jimmydrive.com/

papakatz45 Loc: South Florida-West Palm Beach

You need to use a double system. I have two copies backed up to external hard drives and also use Carbonite. If there is a fire, flood or hurricane I have the cloud backup. More than one system makes sense.

windshoppe Loc: Arizona

I agree. I, too, use an external hard drive running Acronis True Image, which is a mirror backup program (backs up everything, including programs, etc. and I've used it twice over the years to do a complete restore when my computer experienced a total crash. As a redundancy cloud backup I use Crash Plan. That company gets good reviews and I've had a couple of issues when the computer I was using had to be replaced (twice). Both times their tech department was very helpful and stayed with me until I had solved the problem. Cost, I believe, is around 50.00 per year.

goldengirl Loc: Tucson, AZ

Thank you very much, everyone, for all the helpful info. I asked my question in the right place. Really appreciate your help!

OnDSnap Loc: NE New Jersey

I still maintain why pay for what you can do yourself....
maybe I'm just old school...what's to fix if it ain't broke.

EstherP

Or similar systems in more than one location...
I have the luxury of having a son live within an hour's travel. I am there at least once a week. One external goes with me and stays there, the other one comes back with me, is updated and goes to my son's on the next visit.

In the near future, my husband and I hope to be visiting Holland. This coming week I will be ordering a fire-proof (1/2-hour), water-proof safe (under $50, Costco) and use it to store that important "stuff" while we are away. In consultation with the local fire department, placed in that part of the house least likely to be badly damaged in a fire. Of course, one drive, completely up-to-date, will stay at our son's, and I may even take a drive with me, as I'm sure my brother and niece will want to "share" some of my photos.
EstherP

goldengirl Loc: Tucson, AZ

Yup, OnDSnap, I hear you. Appreciate your giving me the details of your backup system. I'll be following up on this with the tech guy in my life.

goldengirl Loc: Tucson, AZ

EstherP, you guys are all so on top of this. Good role models for me. We ain't leavin' nuthin' to chance! :-)

waynebritt Loc: Folsom, California

For backup storage (and it's within your budget) I'd recommend a backup unit such as a Drobo. Mine contains 4 hard-drives that if one goes bad, I can swap it out for another without any loss of data. The're simple to use and I back up to it automatically using backup programs such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper (Macintosh but Windows have similar)

Frapha Loc: Tulsa, Oklahoma

I have a couple 1T Seagate external HDs that I use, but I'm also a firm believer in Carbonite and have used it for several years. It can backup your entire operating system, and another advantage is that you can access your files from any computer any time. It's been well worth the $$ the two times my onboard HD crashed over the past 7-8 years. Sometimes, having the external HD available is convenient, but I'm still a believer in Carbonite.

Randolph Loc: Medway, UK

I have a couple of old desktop computers circa 1975/80 manufacture that gave up the ghost I am assuming that they are old SATA hdd's I would like to recover some of the files and photo's on them. which is why I haven't recycled them yet. Will these work on the Impact machine? also is it compatible with a macbook?

Randolph Loc: Medway, UK

Microsoft skydrive give you 5G free storage. Nikon also give free storage.

Libby Q.

A photographer/computer geek was interviewed on a news program the other day. He stored his photos in a cloud, and it was hacked. He lost all the photos of his newborn. He was able to track down the hackers, teens, and he promised not to press charges if they told him how they did it. They had called the cloud
company and asked for a different password. I think there was more to it than that, but that is scary enough. I have several externals, and it is a good idea to keep them in different places.