Best and Safest Cloud Photo Storage
 

Hi! I've been out of the loop for awhile but suffice it to say I'm caving in and want to start backing up my photos and a few important files to a cloud service. I don't necessarily need to access it much outside of home. It's more of a safety net in case something were to happen to my external hard drives. I am a nut for security however and do not want something that is going to be accessed by anyone else unless I give permission. I'm a bit paranoid about Google Drive, too, as Google seems to own everything these days. Is there any service you really love or that you feel is secure and worth the price? I'll probably need close to a Terabyte to back up all of my photos. Thanks in advance!

Hey Andrea!

I was going to say Google. I love it. I know, they're into everything - but that's the nature of cloud storage, someone else has it. The benefit of using google vs. something like backblaze is that google integrates so well into your life. I can type "cat" into my google photos and it will pull up every photo of a cat. I can type in "old person" and it finds grandparents! I can type in "florida", "soccer", etc. it's amazing.

if you take lots of photos with your cell phone, google is hard to beat. You can set up auto archive so when you're on wi-fi it pulls photos off your cell phone and backs them up, then asks if you want to delete from your cell.

If you still aren't sold on Google...I recommend backblaze. It's cheap and effective! it's just backup though, so you don't get any if the benefits of photo accessibility like you do with Google.

I use iCloud & pay for more storage ($1/month), Google Photos, Amazon Photos, then I use Backblaze to backup my laptop and ehd. Plus Dropbox to backup/transfer between my phone & laptop.

I also use iCloud and Backblaze... so worth it for peace of mind. I recently had a catastrophic motherboard failure and was able to restore everything easily through Backblaze.

I also hoard hard drives. I wait for Black Friday sales and scoop up as many as the budget allows.

I use Backblaze because it will back up my computer & EHDs. I do also use Google Photos, but my main backup is Backblaze. I've used it for years and have never had a problem. I have had to use it to restore when a computer died and that went very smoothly.

I use
SmugMug
Crashplan
External HDs

You guys have me looking into Google Photos now. I have my photos on 2 EHD, and my older photos are copied onto DVD's also. But the newer ones aren't on DVD's. I'm thinking I may look into this more. Maybe looking into the app for my phone too. It may help for our upcoming Big trip this year! Thanks ladies! If I run into issues, or have further questions, I'm going to bug all of you!

I also use Backblaze. Just switched recently from Carbonite.

I would definitely do Google Photos if I was going on a big trip. Set it to continuously backup because you never know what is going to happen. Another friend was in Italy last year. She had her phone right in her hand and it was stolen. She had her GP set up to only backup when she connected to wi-fi (thinking she would do it at night when she was at the hotel), so all of her photos from the day were gone. She was more upset about that than she was about the phone.

I use Crash Plan to back up my external hard drive and my desktop downstairs. I use iCloud for things taken with my phone. I also have unlimited Google storage so I've started using Google Photos to upload photos to.

I am probably going to switch from Crash Plan to something else. They changed pricing recently. I loved Mozy back in the day and have used Backblaze as well.

Google Photos and Blackblaze here... hubby has his photos backed up to Apple Photos.

That is so crazy! I saw a video of how these syndicates steal cell phones right out of peoples' hands, and it was really smooth. (And terrible, too, but the kind of thing I had to watch a couple of times before I could even see who took it.)

I'm a big fan of Google Photos, too. I sync it with my computer and my phone, and I can pull my photos off anywhere.

If you're looking for a paid service, I've been really happy with Carbonite. I got a new computer recently, and it automatically downloaded everything from my old one to the new. And their customer service is great.

I use my Amazon Prime account. My photos upload as long as I'm connected to wifi. I haven't had any issues with it and if you have an Amazon Prime account, it's free.

Kellie, it seriously is crazy! She said she was being so careful. One minute it was in her hand, the next it was gone!

in fact...with google photos I can create a link to share something (a photo, a video, or even an album that has multiple photos/videos) and create a QR barcode of that share link. And then you put that QR code in your scrapbook page.

15 years from now when someone is looking at the page, they scan the QR code and it will link directly to that video or album that goes with your scrapbook page!

here's an example: https://photos.app.goo.gl/J8PmpV3kTRieMmYj8

if you have a QR barcode reader on your phone, have it read that barcode and it will take you to a video from that same night.