To not get cloud storage

[Dizzydinosaur]

Ok so it seems that even after a childhood of growing up with techological advances I am now a bit of a dinosaur at the grand old age of 34. A trip to PC World and a chat with the store manager this morning to find out about data storage options for family photos had me in pieces.

Ten years ago I was under the assumption my brand new external hard drive was the answer to digital photo storage. This is now definitely not the case, apparently if I must do it that way I have to have at least 2, only use them on one machine to avoid a backup conflict of files, and then hope and pray the thing doesn't break down or reach some unknown expiry date of usage.

So then the conversation moves onto 'the cloud which I admit I am already scared about what with hacking scandals and data breaches rife these days. More astonishing to me though is the idea that it's not a one-off payment, to enjoy 2tb of storage I would pay for 5 years and then have to renew with a similar payment. Is it only me or does no one else want to run a mile from these kind of setups? I mean when would I ever stop paying into it? I even asked the PC World guy about paying it every 5 years for the rest of my life and when I did passing it onto my kids... !? To me this just sounds like an insane amount of money and stress to pay up on time, he responded by telling me it should be a necessary responsibility to pass onto the kids!

I do understand cloud based storage has many perks and is extremely useful to many business owners and many families find it convenient to backup instantly etc. However for the mundane layperson such as myself, who doesn't have more than a few thousand is it really worth it? Unforseen circumstances like house fire is the reason usually banded about to go for cloud storage as well as printed photos, so you have your online backup just in case, but I still can't get my head around the fees and commitment involved with it.

Aibu not to want to use the cloud for my photo storage and stick with prints?

Not being unreasonable, do what you want.

Well I store my photos on the cloud so I don't have to download them onto my hard drive every few weeks/months. It's a hassle as far as I'm concerned.

I'd loose photos if I lost my phone and hadn't backed up for ages.

Backup is instant and I can access years worth of photos on my phone/tablet/computer instantly. I don't have to do a thing. I pay a few pounds a month, which I can easily afford. Yes over the years it will add up, I suppose. But I have never thought of it that way. I see it as a service, not a product. You could cancel it anytime and transfer your photos elsewhere. I did this when I move from iPhoto to Google.

Hard drive storage isn't secure enough for me, I hvave had multiple external hard drives fail.

Use Google photos (a free app) as a free just in case back up and keep printed albums? I know it doesn’t keep photos at full resolution but its the image I want not the quality.

Well, I can't see how "the cloud" is more secure than your own hard drive that is locked up in your own house. How many cases of people's hard drives being hacked and their photos being stolen have you heard of, compared to "the cloud"?

what with hacking scandals and data breaches rife these days

This is one reason I don't use a cloud
But I'm a bit of a dinosaur in that I don't use my phone online, and I still use an actual camera to take photos (camera on my phone is shite though)
We use hard drives and memory cards for storage

I don't get it.i paid for 'the cloud' for a year when I first bought my computer, but I have no idea how to access anything on it. Or indeed, if I have anything on it.

I pay 79p a month for cloud storage of everything
Then I back my photos up every now and again onto a memory stick
It makes me sort them and decide what to keep or delete
Not sure what your issue is

OP I also hate the idea of the cloud. It seems mad that it's the future of storing stuff.
Like a PP, I do pay for the cloud but back up to a USB too.

(I think my iPhone must be set up wrong because when I plug it into my computer I can only see any photos not yet backed up to iCloud. For the rest I have to download them individually from iCloud - absolute PITA)

How to you find them again from the cloud? I think my apple devices are automatically storing all mine, 'cos when i got a new apple device and signed in, there they all were. But my daughter uses an android phone and the memory is full with her photos. So we back up to the cloud, then delete from her device...but how do you get them back down again. Can anyone help?

Cyclingpast I get your point I suppose my reply is physical safety from house fires and the like?

I don't mean to criticise anyone who chooses to use a cloud and gets on with it. I am a tight arse and not inclined to monthly/yearly charges, and also a bit scared of whichever company changing its policies in the future.

Ooooo I bloody hate all this cloud nonsense too OP. Just saying. I feel your pain X

I don't like paying ongoing subscriptions either op. It adds up And up. I'm on giffgaff so not even on a phone contract... (can't actually remember my iTunes password either). Watching with interest

I'm another Currys cloud purchaser who bought it while slightly, nay, very bamboozled and brain scrambled when buying a new computer recently.
Like you, OP, I have come to feel that it is a load of old nonsense and just not necessary.
Of course, once you've loaded the thing with your precious pics etc, your sort of hooked in to the damn thing as you wouldn't want to lose stuff.
I have absolutely bugger all in mine and had I unscrambled my brain a bit quicker, I would have returned it for a refund.
I just hope I can figure out how to cancel it when it comes to renewal time as, IIRC, renewal is automatic unless you say stop.

I don't like signing up for subscriptions either. I used cloud storage when I had a large free allowance. I reduced it when my allowance was cut. I reduced it some more when it become too much hassle making sure everything was synced properly.

It is much, much cheaper to back up to hardware in your home. I let Windows 10 file history take care of things.

I've decided that it's too much hassle to make sure Google cloud storage is correctly replicating all my deletes when I tidy up your photo libraries, so I no longer maintain a full and accurate copy of my photos in the cloud. (Photos from my Android phone go the automatically, but I also replicate them at full resolution via Onedrive to my PC, where I then automatically move them to a non-cloud directory so that my Onedrive space isn't used up.)

I have multiple backup system

Several cloud based without which I'd be lost, as I'd never be able to access documents across multiple devices

IPhone photos on my camera roll all automatically uploaded to iCloud anyway, all photos saved locally as well.

Every single file on my laptop is automatically synced to my Dropbox account. So I can access ANY file from my computer anywhere else - on my phone, via the browser of someone else's computer. Essential if I'm working across two machines. Anything I do on one is synced to Dropbox, which syncs to my other computer. Absolute game changer

Don't include music in my Dropbox sync because I have over 100Gb of music, stored on my big Macbook Pro. The disk space on my Macbook Air is much smaller so sync everything BUT my music

To ensure everything is backed up including music, I use a remote backup service called carbonite - I do a weekly backup of my 'master' Macbook Pro which has everything including music

So everything is doubly in the cloud

I also do physical backups onto external drives a couple of times a year (one using time machine on my mac to one drive, and another drive I use carbon copy cloner to make a bootable clone - so files, software, operating system, everything. These drives live with the passports etc in a lockable fireproof safe box

I use a service called backupify to back up all my cloud services where I don't have anything locally - eg all my Gmail email for the last 13 years. So even if Google accidentally deleted the account or something, it's completely backed up automatically without me having to do anything manually

My system is extreme! But it's my digital life. And my work. I couldn't do my job without cloud services and cloud backup

Every time you see a sentence containing the words "the cloud" try replacing it with "somebody else's computer anywhere in the world who you don't know and have no control over"

I can't get my head around the cloud either.

One of these days it will all disappear into the ether...

My laptop is far more likely to be nicked - and in any case, personal stuff is encrypted anyway!

It would be an absolute nightmare trying to work across multiple machines and access important documents if they were only stored locally or on physical backups

Cloud sync also saves everything instantly. Plus allows versioning. Can't do that with local backups

And if everything is on one external drive and you drop it, you're fucked. Unless you do daily backups onto multiple external hard drives just to cover your bases. I certainly wouldn't be able to be that disciplined!

1tb of data on dropbox costs £7.99 a month, or £96 a year. From the age of 10 to 80, this costs £6,712.
1tb of data holds 2 million photos. Printing these costs 8p, £160,000. two versions to protect from fire, £320,000.
Your lifetime dropbox cost covers printing 84,000 photos, or 44,000 twice.
Apple is 50gb for £0.79/month, £9.48 a year or £664 in a lifetime. this holds 16,000 photos, which would cost £1,280 to print, or £2,560 to print twice.
£664 gets you 8,300 printed once or 4,150 twice.
How many photos do you have, choose the best method and either pay the money or print and delete.

I pay for extra storage on Google Cloud.

I have over 5000 songs backed up on there. I learned my lesson when my SD card suddenly scrambled last year and I nearly lost all my music (luckily had it backed up on a laptop, which has since died)

5foot5 good point

Bear in mind that the Cloud is just "Data centres with 100s of thousands of computers in owned by someone else who isnt me that I pay to manage my data for me" eg Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Dropbox etc etc. There is nothing ethereal or different or other about the Cloud. Its just sending your data over the internet to someone elses storage media. The thing is though, they can afford to do multiple levels of data replication and backup to multiple locations in different datacentres located in different parts of the world. Not infallible, sure, but a lot less likely to suffer catastrophic failure than we are at home in one house, with a couple of hard drives and one or two computers.

I d be more worried about photo media becoming obsolete as new formats will inevitably take over.
also, if you were to die, what steps have you made to enable your kids to access what-ever storage you ve got?

I print out all my special pictures & stick in an album, i dont use cloud for the above reasons.

Decent external drives are reliable, especially if you use two, the chances of say your laptop and both drives going u/s all at the same time is very remote.

Only if you remember to put one in your car every night in case of a house fire.

I work in data storage and we advise that the optimum solution is to keep your data on site, so you have control of it, backup to a second location and also backup to 2 different cloud providers.

Costs though. I personally keep my photos on 2 laptop hard drives, synced at all times to google and microsoft cloud services.

I have tried the Cloud twice, and, both times, I ended up on the phone to an Apple person before abandoning it. I have photos on an external hard drive kept in one part of the house, they are also burnt to DVDs which are kept in another part of the house, and they are stored on USBs which are kept in the car in case the house burns down. I've also had photobooks made (the only true futureproofing!) Mind you, backing up is a bind...