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?

Apple cloud services are terrible in terms of usability.

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?

Digital data will services for passing on digital media etc after your death exist specifically for this

A hard drive can easily go on the fritz over time

I wouldn't rely entirely on a physical backup alone. I always advocate both physical (stored in fireproof box) and digital (remote) backup. And for photos definitely print out as prints or photobooks as physical mementos

I use cloud storage (I am 71 so far from a young tech expert). I bought a cheap laptop from pc world and was given some free cloud storage with it. I keep getting emails telling me that I should use it or lose my data. My data is safe with Microsoft and Google.
I like cloud storage, I am sitting in a pub with my wife and have just looked at files that I saved when at home from a different device.l

My iCloud was full and I didn’t want to have to buy more storage. I’ve downloaded google photos and every pic goes in there and synchs with my iPhone too so they’re on that too. I think that’s an ok thing to do?

In terms of longevity, the cloud is the best best. All hardware degrades / becomes obsolete over time. Even printed photos often fade etc.

And the cloud providers will constantly renew their hardware and migrate data over to it. Big storage arrays are constantly having failing or failed disks swapped out for brand new ones all the time transparently to users or the data stored on them, it's how they are designed. When the storage arrays themselves get old, data is migrated to new ones. Power supplies and battery backups are constantly tested, renewed or replaced in data centres. Data is replicated to other data centres. Regular disaster recovery planning and testing is carried out. Not infallible but short of the complete failure of the internet or some kind of apocalyptic event, data store at Google/MS/Amazon facilities isn't going anywhere, not without a lot of warning anyway.

I think it's difficult to replicate this level of reliability at home.