It’s going to happen to everyone. One way or another (fire, hard drive failure, accidentally reformatting your hard drive) you will lose the photos you have stored on your computer. And when you do, you will be devastated.
I cried the day I lost 3 years of family images because I wasn’t paying attention and reformatted one of my hard drives which contained my photos. I was able to recover some of them but for the most part, all was lost.
Recently a few people I know have lost their most cherished memories. Their photos! My daughter lost all the images on her laptop when her house caught on fire. A friend recently had a hard drive fail and Best Buy was not able to retrieve any of the data on it.
I can not stress the importance of BACKING. UP. YOUR. PHOTOS!
And there are a variety of ways to do it. Cloud technology makes it super simple to do these days. And you should have more than one backup plan.
So let’s talk about some of the options available these days.
Photobucket – I’ve been a user of Photobucket for years. In the beginning it was mainly a site used for sharing your images with family and friends on the Internet. But recently they have included various plans for storing your images. Their prices range from $30 per year to $399.99 per year. Just all depends on how much storage space you need. One thing I really like about Photobucket is that they now have an App you can download onto your computer that will automatically backup your photos and upload then to their cloud server. This is an especially nice feature so you don’t have to think about it.
Flickr – Flickr is similar to Photobucket in that it allows users to share their images easily with family and friends. They offer 3 different plans: $6.95 for three months, $24.95 per year or $44.95 for two years. They do have a limit on how large the image size can be. And they do not have an automatically upload option (that I’m aware of) like Photobucket. But it is still an option for backing up your photos.
Now those two sites are good for storing your jpg images, but if you shoot in RAW, like me, or you need something more, there are several options for you as well.
Carbonite – This service will allow you to backup more than just your photos. You can backup all the data stored on your computer. This is an excellent idea because like I said before, hard drives will fail. They have three different plans to choose from. For $59 for the year, you can backup the data from your internal hard drive only. Need to backup your external hard drive as well, that will cost you $99 for the year. And if you want to include videos, then you need to choose the $149 per year option. They do offer a free trial so you can check it out to see if this is the best option for you.
CrashPlan – Now I have to say that I am kind of partial to this particular service because it is one that I am currently using. They offer three different plans. If you just have less than 10GB of data to store, the CrashPlan+ is only $32.99 for the year. If you want unlimited storage than I would go for the CrashPlan+ Unlimited plan at $59.99 for the year. They also offer a Family plan that allows you to back up data for up to 10 computers. I recently had to restore a hard drive and the process was smooth.
Mozy – I’ve used this service in the past but I moved to CrashPlan last year because of an awesome deal I got and they offer unlimited storage. Which as a photographer, I need that unlimited storage! But its definitely a good service. They offer two plans. You can backup one computer up to 50GB for $5.99 a month or three computers up to 125GB for $9.99 a month. Mozy also offers service for your mobile devices as well.
Dropbox – What I like about Dropbox is that allows me to easily share files with family and friends. But I think the feature that really sold me was the mobile App, it automatically uploads images from my cell phone to my cloud storage and its immediately available to me for use on my computer. Yes you should be backing up your cell phones images too. Let’s face it, we tend to use our cell phone cameras more these days. You can get up to 20GB of storage space for free just by sharing and referring other users. And if you need more storage, you can easily upgrade to one of their paid plans. 100GB of storage will cost you $99 for the year or $9.99 a month; 200GB of storage is $199 per year or $19.99 a month; and then there is the 500GB of storage for $499 per year of $49.99 per month.
There’s obviously more options available out there so give Google a try and find the best service for you. But I encourage you all to go out and find a backup solution today. You will thank me one day for it!