Allow me to start off by saying that I am an IT Manager of 25+ years. I know lots about backups, hard drives, USB drives, CD-RW, DVD-RW, and older magnetic media methods of backing up data.
My teenage boys are now 13 and 14. I am divorced as of 5 years ago and have a boatload of photos of videos of their years, prior to my divorce. I have over 30,000+ stills and about 170 hours of 8mm tape that I had transferred to DVD myself years ago in .ISO format, so they'd be playable in a standard DVD player.
Now I am seeing things like the latest idea, is take those DVD's and convert them to .MKV files. They are basically 4 gigs each in their native form and this would compress them significantly. I also have all of the images on multiple hard drives, USB drives, and on a RAID 1 NAS from QNAP to be able to view things on my TV or mobile devices.
It seems now that the time is to start looking to the cloud services for a lot of these things, as I fear degradation, mechanical failure on the hard drives, not such much on the USB drives, but they don't hold nearly the same capacities.
What are people using for archiving their personal stuff now, that they feel is safe, affordable and will be around for awhile? I know Google photos and Amazon offer things for free photo storage, but this is not in native form. They compress them. I also have these huge video files that need to be put somewhere as well. I keep a hard drive or two in a a safety deposit box outside of my home with copies of the files. (This is the IT guy in me - "offsite storage" in the event of a fire or burglary. Periodically, I will update the alternate drives that I have, with a whole new "full backup" and then swap them at the bank in the safety deposit box.
Is anyone having any inexpensive luck with any storage rental solutions, like Dropbox or other lesser known equivalents that have nice high limits, and don't simply limit you to uploading photos only? Although, if there were a "photo only" solution, that would solve half of my issue. I am thinking that I need a few terabytes of space, at least.
I hate to pay for something monthly that go bankrupt, or get hacked, where I keep everything in trust. I know these solutions, if they are any good, would have backup systems of their own, and I'd eventually get my content back, so I know this would be a short term interruption if something bad were to happen.
I don't really need a server per se, in the sense that I need beautiful photo management tools to go along with it. That isn't necessary. If I just knew of a place that would let you dump a whole boatload of files, that would suffice. It doesn't matter what the interface is to me.
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I have bought an external hard drive for mine, i also have copies on my laptop :)
I have so many external drives that its not even funny. Probably 10 hard drives and maybe 15 USB drives. I am trying to find a way to automate some of it and also eliminate some of these drives.
Oh wow i have 1 hard drive plus a few USB drives. I do wish i had took more photographs :)
Yes, I know that issue. My approach probably isn't the most sophisticated one, but rather pragmatic:
I periodically upload photos and movies taken with my mobile to a cloud service. This ensures safety and availability as they offer triple safety.
When it comes to large, high resolution photo files (Raw or TIFF) format as well as to HD or 4K video files, I also use external drives that I occasionally mirror. I also keep one copy in an external deposit box.
I also try to clean my database as often as possible, i.e. delete images of the same series, event, etc. that do not belong to the top 10 or 20%. I also cut and edit movies, keep (and save) the final result and delete the uncut raw material. This helps me keep my data load manageable.
Please let us know the result of your research ;-)
Yes I will let people know what I find out is best to do. I am thinking that I need to find some sort of storage rental space. I wish I just knew which one.
I thought that's what Sia about? You might want to check. I used to hold their coin.
Sia is about backup of photos and such? I used to mine SIA for a little while myself. I am still holding some of those coins somewhere. I put a lot of time dual-mining into it and have very little to show for it. I will have to look at their latest and greatest efforts. Thanks.
That's what I thought when I was buying it
Ok, I will have to revisit that. I don't even recall how many coins I have of it, but I gotta believe that they aren't worth much and that I don't have tons.
Good job . I followed you also upvote .
There are several Video and photo Management Software available in the market and the choice should depend on your application. I prefer to use a Phototheca 3. Best for me. Try it