[Closed] Storing digital photos without a computer

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ultra-64GB-Flash-Drive/dp/B01M127X8F

(Assuming it's not an iPhone, in which case I've no idea.  There used to be a "photo" adapter which took an SD card I think.)

Cloud

Cloud

Good point well made.

I have a Monument you could have for £40 - it's a little appliance (bring your own USB disk) that you plug in to your home network, and use an app to sync your photos to it. Think you can pug it into a TV to view, that sort of thing - I got it as a Kickstarter project sign up, but to be honest I've never got around to setting it up and I'm not convinced I need another copy of them kicking about.

Monument Site

TBH I'd get another laptop. £100 will get you something that'll do the job very easily. There are plenty of workarounds if you really don't want to but you are making life hard for yourself unnecessarily. Might encourage you to back them up a little more often. Waiting until the card is full seems like a disaster in the making. Back them up to a network drive as well and you'll be able to see them from anywhere and you'll have two copies (which is a start). The laptop can also be set-up to back them up to the cloud.

Depends how much storage you need, really. (As well as whether you need backups and how easily you want to access it.)

£30 will get you, roughly:

- 1TB of spinning disk

- 128GB of USB stick or SD card

- 32GB of wifi USB stick (useful for getting photos off iOS devices)

- 3 years of 50GB cloud storage

- 3 months of 1TB cloud storage

- half a secondhand laptop

Personally I have an old Thinkpad X61 into which I've stuck a 1TB disk; you should be able to get the same for about £100 (£60 or so for the Thinkpad, £40 for the disk). Then if you need backups at any point just buy an external disk and use robocopy or a backup app.

If your photos mean anything to you, then not storing them in the cloud is just madness (especially given the last criteria in the OP)

If your photos mean anything to you, then not storing them in the cloud is just madness

Remember that "in the cloud" just means "on someone else's computer".

If you're concerned about data loss (which is what I assume you're alluding to) then anything the cloud does you can do too, without a monthly cost. Disk failure? Use a second disk. House fire? Store the second disk at a relative's house.

What the cloud does is make that stuff easier, and for many people it's a great solution. But if you're happy with plugging a disk in once in a while and having some exposure to risk between backups*, you can mitigate the same risks more cheaply without the cloud (unless you generate so little data that you can get by with a free account) and without handing over your data to someone else.

Another option is to use a personal backup/"cloud" on a self-hosted web package or a local media server on your home network.

* and that risk can be addressed by using a small free cloud account to back up anything you've created since your last manual backup, which is what I sometimes do.

If you have Android phones, you can set the Google Photos app to automatically copy your pics to your Google Photos online. It has no storage limit, but does reduce the size of them a little.

You prob want something else as well for the more important pics, but it's good as a basic level of backup.

Good point well made.

Thanks 😉

+1 for Google Photos as a basic back up.  The iPhone app works really well and backs up daily, as does the Windows desktop app.  No complaints here.

Remember that “in the cloud” just means “on someone else’s computer”.

Disk failure? Use a second disk. House fire? Store the second disk at a relative’s house.

Sure, not disputing any of that (though costs depend on what you already have: if you've got a disk, it's free). Just suggesting alternatives. Not everyone wants all their photos stored on Google/Apple/Dropbox's servers and not everyone wants to commit to a monthly fee.

In any case, many people would say 50GB isn't a lot of photos: to store mine in iCloud I'd be paying £10 a month; meaning a spinning disk of the same capacity would pay for itself in four months, and an additional redundant backup in eight.

It all depends on what your needs are and, as I said, for many people the cloud is a great solution. But it's not the only solution, and regardless of whether it's the best solution for you it's not the best for everyone.

Go analogue whilst you make up your mind.  Truprint, Photobox, Snapfish etc frequently have intro offers for 500 6x4" prints for absolute pennies (like, less than a fiver).  Means you actually get to look at the photos too, rather than just worry about backing them up 🙂

I take alit of photos for work on my phone.

Google makes nice little albums for me and backsthem up all the time and tells me when I can delete them from my phone and they're safe.

Can you not set another device to sync with photos and download them to that?*

*Genuine question seems like you could set it up but no idea how

If you’re concerned about data loss (which is what I assume you’re alluding to) then anything the cloud does you can do too, without a monthly cost.

Feel free to store your photo's yourself but you would be barking not to upload them to [s]Google Photo[/s] a cloud service as well.

Great, you've latched upon the word "anything" and taken it out of context in its purest literal form.

What I meant by "anything" was in the context of guarding against data loss: that you can implement redundant storage over a geographical area without a monthly cost. I also said—in the subsequent but which you chose not to quote—that cloud services make that easier, and that the cloud is (as a result) a great solution for most people.

I also said that implementing it yourself means some manual effort, ie doing the synchronisation and geographical distribution, and that the time between backups exposes you to some risk. Although I also said that cloud services can be used to mitigate that exact same risk.

So, if—say—you between 200GB and 1TB of photos that you want backed up, you can pay £10 a month for cloud storage and that's great. Over the next five years you'll spend £600 storing those photos.

Or you could buy two disks, plug some black boxes together once every three months, clean out your free cloud storage to start backing up the next three month chunk, and over five years you'll spend £80, assuming you even need to buy the disks at all.

Given that this approach covers any significant data loss risk that I can think of (feel free to suggest any I might have missed) other than being too lazy/forgetful to do it often enough, I don't think it's "barking" to either pay £120 a year for an additional backup or to add a free backup that's lossy.

I'm not sure why it's so upsetting to suggest that for some people (which may or may not include the OP) not using the cloud can actually be the best solution given the relative costs, risks and effort, let alone implications of data availability (eg you may have multiple devices in your house using the same accounts so you don't have to keep re-purchasing apps, and you may not want all of the photos you take uploaded for everyone else in the family to see) or so on.

For the nth time: for many people, especially those who are only interested in photos taken on their phones, cloud services are a great solution 🙂

Print them.

No Seriously. Hear me out here .... of that stash of pictures how many do you actually look at regularly? I, like you, have a huge amount of pictures stored, I've also recently been freeing up space on our phones and as such have re-visited old pics and realised that we just don't look at them. We do however keep referring back to photo books we've made so my plan is to start working on a 'book of the year' to capture all these great moments and to ensure they get looked at.

As for storage, I use google images and a RAID drive.

Over the next five years you’ll spend £600 storing those photos.

between 200GB and 1TB of photos that you want backed up, you can pay £10 a month for cloud storage and that’s great.

I’m presuming that we’re ignoring the fact that you can store an unlimited number of <16 megapixel photos free of charge with Google Photo.

I wasn't aware of the precise details of the service; I acknowledged it was free but I was going on the "it does reduce the size of [photos]" comment above and filing it under "lossy". So for some people it will be counted out on that front. Relatively few, possibly, but some.

Again:

Cloud. Services. Are. A. Great. Solution. For. Many. People. 🙂

£6.99/month for 2Tb.

My prices are out of date, then: last I saw was £10 for 1TB. Either way, it's still cash every month to Apple or (for some people, only a subset of whom will be bothered) lossy storage or incompatible formats via Google.

(I don’t think we’re going to agree on this one lol)

Given that I'm not trying to say what's best for you, for the OP, or for anyone else, I'm not sure what you're hoping we might "agree" on. I'm just saying that there are other options than cloud services and there are reasons why some people might find those options preferable. Are you hoping to agree on the idea that anyone who doesn't use cloud services to store their photos is some sort of moron? If so then no, I don't think we are going to agree 🙂

Are you hoping to agree on the idea that anyone who doesn’t use cloud services to store their photos is some sort of moron?

Cloud.  Not only is it the best choice today, it's going to be an even better choice tomorrow and the day after.

As mentioned before Google photos allows you to store pretty high res photos for free, and does 1TB if you want it for 80 quid a year.  Next year it will be cheaper of course.

Google's unlimited "free" service does limit it to smaller files but fine for phone snaps, though I think I read they mess with them a bit too, compressing them down etc.

Another option is Flickr. It used to sync everything for a 1TB store or something, but the "everything" was my issue as it just found every picture on your computer and synced it, no choices, or something like that. Not sure what the mobile app does.

If you're looking at paying for storage, Office 365 Personal sub is £6/month or £60/year and gets you 1TB of OneDrive storage (app for it on iPhone/Android too, not just a Windows thing). Also includes Office 365 subscription, but you need a computer to get the most out of it. You can get the Office apps for phone/tablet though. Office 365 Home is £8/month or £80/year and gets you the 1TB storage and 5 licences for 365.

If your photos mean anything to you, then not storing them in the cloud is just madness (especially given the last criteria in the OP)

This. Having seen this happen to family where nothing was backed up, not in the cloud even and the computer died with disc unrecoverable it seems. Family photos lost.

Mine are in Google from phone, all photos from SLR and phones in OneDrive, also backed up to my NAS which is also backed up to an external drive.

Storing on DVDs isn't recommended unless they're backup grade. A lot of consumer grade recordable ones can degrade after 10 years or so.