Google Photos (Page 2): I wood never back up my photos on the net. It is much safer to bye a external hard drive and back your photos up and put it in a safe deposit box. Take it out...

htsmith Loc: Glen Burnie, MD

I wood never back up my photos on the net. It is much safer to bye a external hard drive and back your photos up and put it in a safe deposit box. Take it out about ones a mouth and ad your new photos

Hacksaw Loc: Pacific Northwest

htsmith wrote:

I wood never back up my photos on the net. It is much safer to bye a external hard drive and back your photos up and put it in a safe deposit box. Take it out about ones a mouth and ad your new photos

I agree. I would never back-up my photos to the cloud unless I wasn't worried about the possibility of someone else using them without my permission. I always keep in mind that once I post or store something online, it's out of my control. In spite of any assurances that it's private, it's not a matter of if but when....

Nisolow

I have used external hard drives and Carbonite for years. After my one fatal hard drive failure, I realized that my external hard drive back up was out of date but Carbonite saved the day. It is slow on initial backup then runs silently in the background.

Mgpfonner

I have found that whenever I am doing some function on my desktop computer that takes a long time, but doesn't require me to use the mouse or keyboard (defrag, file copying, etc.) the computer will sometimes slip into sleep mode; at that time all processes will stop until I wake it up.

Armadillo Loc: Ventura, CA

MikeMcK wrote:

I signed up for Google Photos and started the back... (show quote)

MikeMcK,

It looks like you are the recipient of the Great Cloud conspiracy. It works when it works, and when it fails 'they' are not responsible.

Your best bet to backup important files is with your own USB TB external Hard Drive. Assign it specific folders to backup on a nightly basis after bedtime and forget about someone's clouds.

Michael G

twillsol Loc: St. Louis, MO

Didereaux wrote:

the fastest, and at present safest way, to backup your photos is at HOME, on external drives.

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: Definitely!

Bogin Bob Loc: Tampa Bay, Florida

Try CrashPlan - multi option back (free) and low cost online backup. Allows backup to drives, other PC and 'friend' PC
Bogin Bob

Novots Loc: Grand Forks, ND

For those that are considering joining a service, for example, SmugMug, you get unlimited storage. I am not certain if you need a certain level of membership to receive the unlimited storage, but of course SmugMug is much more than storage - webpage, purchasing of photos etc. I realize this is a bit off topic but there may be others reading this that are considering backup storage and trying to decide if they are going to do something with their photography online, might be able to take care of both aspirations at one time. There certainly are other services out there as well. I also suggest a hard copy backup of the crucial photos to a cd/dvd/thumbdrive or as others have said, with the cost of memory becoming pretty reasonable, keep the memory card as an additional backup.

photoman022 Loc: Manchester CT USA

A number of posters mentioned having multiple external hard drives; all of my photos are on external hard drives. A few years back I read an article which stated you need multiple hard drives because they will malfunction. I bought two backup hard drives; not long after that my original hard drive "crashed" (and burned). The day it crashed, I bought a new hard drive. I am glad I heeded the warning a bought multiple hard drives because I would have lost 8 years worth of photographs (plus the old "analog" photos I scanned).

pchoudhury Loc: Sugar Land, Texas

In my opinion fastest and safest way is to store your photo in an external Hard Drive .

Big Tony Loc: Fort Myers, Florida

I've had really good luck with carbonite. Nice people to deal with when you have an issue.
I also back-up at home on an external drive. I you can afford SSD drives that is the way to go.

jgitomer Loc: Skippack Pennsylvania

During my career in IT I was a Data Base Administrator.

What I learned (the hard way) is that you should have three generations of your data base/ file system. Your active data base/file system, a copy as of the end of the previous day, and -- stored at another premise -- a copy as of the next prior day.

Given current technology I would add additional protection in the form of adding each file to both your data base/file system and a USB device and I would use two USB devices one for the current day and one for the prior day. (Just remember to rotate the USB devices.)

If you omit the off-premises back up you run the risk of losing everything if you have a fire, a flood, or some other "local disaster".

Off-premises can be your place of work, a friends house, the trunk of your car (unless it is kept in an attached garage) or, for that matter, in the cloud. Just pick that which best suits.

Jerry

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Hacksaw wrote:

I agree. I would never back-up my photos to the cloud unless I wasn't worried about the possibility of someone else using them without my permission. I always keep in mind that once I post or store something online, it's out of my control. In spite of any assurances that it's private, it's not a matter of if but when....

Carbonite encrypts, and you need your ID & PW to get to the files. (From anywhere by the way.)

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Hacksaw wrote:

I agree. I would never back-up my photos to the cloud unless I wasn't worried about the possibility of someone else using them without my permission. I always keep in mind that once I post or store something online, it's out of my control. In spite of any assurances that it's private, it's not a matter of if but when....

Carbonite encrypts, and you need your ID & PW to get to the files. (From anywhere by the way.)

hank6595 Loc: Amesbury, MA

I have been using Carbonite for a few years and I found out I had made the right decision last October when my computer crashed. Carbonite had me up and running in two days. I also backup certain programs on disks.
One call, and the process of getting my files back is all it took.