Question: I am an amateur photographer and I have a really old laptop that I’m using right now to keep all the pictures that I take on. I am terrified of losing them all because my laptop is so old and it might crash. I would be devastated. I have some pictures on my phone too. What do others do? Do other amateur photographers keep pictures on external hard drives or on the cloud? I have read so many things online.
Answer: I have quite a few photographs myself and have been backing up my work on Google Drive. I have the 2 terabyte plan presently, but I will have to upgrade eventually. After working on my photographs, they are backed up automatically on a daily basis. This has worked out for me and so far so good with this way of storing photographs.
Answer: I would say this is the best route to take today. Google Drive and other cloud services can be accessed by multiple devices and is the safest of all options. They don’t cost a lot either. I have tons of photos and files and I keep them all on a cloud storage solution. You’ll find that many photographers also like to use external hard drives, which are getting mighty inexpensive these days. I just looked at some prices on amazon this afternoon and saw a 4tb portable WD external drive for $99. That’s insanely cheap.
Anyway, while I do use external drives for my photography, I find that they’re susceptible to failure or disaster. If you really want to be safe, go with a cloud provider and an external drive. That way, you’ll keep your photos off your computer in case of failure or theft, yet you’ll be able to access them quickly upon demand.
I just took a look for the top cloud providers these days. They are: Google Drive, pCloud, DropBox, Microsoft OneDrive, Sync.com, Mega and so many more. They all have apps for both PCs, Macs and handheld devices.
Question: If you don’t mind me asking, how much to you store on the cloud and what do you use? How much is it?
Answer: Hi – I use Google Drive currently and I’m on the 2TB plan for $99 per year. I think I’m storing around 112GB on it right now. It’s great because it backs my files up in real time. You just need an internet connection that’s pretty fast, so it doesn’t bog your usage down, meaning, make everything else you’re browsing slow while it’s uploading. It’s a great solution for not that much money. Tons of photographers use Google Drive.
Answer: I was just looking on Amazon and Toshiba 2TB external drives now cost $62.99. That’s not bad. It’s pretty much the same thing for Western Digital. I have two Western Digital portable external drives and I haven’t had any issues with them. It’s a cheaper alternative than going with a cloud based option, although, they aren’t off-site, so there’s always that risk.
What I’d really like to get is a nice big 8TB or 10TB desktop external drive for a lot, if not all, of my storage. These cost (both Western Digital – I’m partial to that brand) $139 and $186 respectively. Can you believe that? I remember years ago, drive space cost a lot more and there was no where near the capacity as there is today. It’s crazy.
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