Many people hear all the time that they should back up their images, but they never get around to it because they either forget, or think that a computer failure could never happen to them. Have you ever experienced this?
I have learned my lesson the hard way, twice.
With all of these recent natural disasters occurring these past few months, backing up my photos has been one of many things on my mind. What happens if there is a BIG earthquake or a fire in the building where I live? Yes, I know, in the grand scheme of things, they are just photos; but nonetheless, I would still be upset I didn't do something more when I had the chance. At the moment, I have all my photos on my laptop, most of them on my external hard drive and some on my boyfriends computer, and a few of them backed up onto my Flickr account.
Although the main purpose of Flickr is to share you photos, this online service allows you to safely store the original file you upload -- providing you have purchased their Pro account. The cost is very reasonable, $24.95 for one year, and it removes any upload or storage limits. It also lets you save and access the very large resolution files. For these reasons, I have chosen Flickr as one of my main back-up plans. The downside is that I have a very large photo library and the process of uploading my photos is very time consuming.
Althought Flickr seems like a reliable service, I have my concerns over Flickr's parent company, Yahoo. I don't think it would be a bad idea to look into other alternatives. However, I suspect they may all cost significantly more than $24.95 per year. I don't mind spending a little more than I currently am, but am not prepared to drop a couple hundred per year. Until I figure out another plan, I guess I will continue to back-up my photos to Flickr.
Do you currently back-up your photos to an online service? What's your back-up plan?
Truthfully, I don't really have one. I try to put as many pictures on Facebook, iCloud, or Photobucket as possible, but that's not really enough.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to have to look into this.
I have mine on the sites where I've ordered things from (Snapfish and Shutterfly) but I've been wondering if I should just do this. Is it easy to take a photo from Flikr and then put it on a site to order items? I am so clueless about it all. I thought maybe putting them all on a hard-drive, but that's annoying too, cuz what if I lose that?
ReplyDelete