Help, I'm a dinosaur!!

[user1491396110]

I'm such a dinosaur when it comes to technology abs I've no idea what I'm doing!!

I always back my photos up on an external hardrive but recently read they have a 7 year life span, I've been using them for 15 years 🤦‍♀️

So I thought it was fine to try to figure out the cloud (assuming that does mean all online storage 🤣 )

So I think I'll need a minimum of 1tb to upload all old photos off the hardrive and Anything new.

Who's best to go with?

I see amazon include unlimited photos in a prime membership, is it the best one? Then I get the other benefits too?

Or if there a better option?

Thanks 😃

(I have no idea where I'm supposed to post this so please move if necessary)

external hard drive is a good solution.

there are also lots of cloud options - dropbox / amazon / google / apple all offer them.

I use Dropbox for work / everyday stuff

and also BackBlaze which is like an insurance policy - cheap and backs up everything in case your computer is lost or stolen

and also an external hard drive.

Sorry for all the typos I can't figure out how to edit

Thanks very much, I will look them up. So does that mean amazon is not very good?? I just liked the idea of getting amazon music too 🤣

I'd probably get a new hard drive, say 2Tb and copy everything over off the old drives.

(I'm a software developer fwiw )

If you're happy backing up to external hard drive, then you can continue to do so, but have multiple and rotate them. If you have 3, then:

• If one does fail at a time when you need to restore, then it just means you lose changes since the last-but-one backup, rather than changes since the last
• A single event such as a power-surge or malware can at most affect the computer and one of the drives at a time, as all but one are unplugged at any given time
• You can ensure that no more than 2 of the 3 drives are ever in the same physical location at one time, so a fire/flood/etc can't affect them all

The problem with backing up to the cloud is that you will pay them until you die, as the effort of moving them again will be too much. As with everything the cloud companies will start charging you more and more and if you stop paying them your precious photos are lost. If you are happy to pay the same company thousands of pounds (with the risk they could lose/delete them too) then going with a cloud based solution is okay. I'm old fashioned - photo albums and USB sticks.

I do cloud and local backup. I have an android so use Google photos. I've found that having my photos on Google actually makes me look at old photos again as my phone keeps coming up with memories and you can even search by face or by what you see in the photo.

Thanks very much everyone, I've found this really helpful 😀