With the NSW Bushfires destroying an estimated 100 homes, the devastating effects of fire are being realised by many who have lost everything. You can buy new furniture and clothes, but one thing you can never get back is your photos. Those sacred memories of times gone by and possibly loved ones that have passed.
Sadly many reports are emerging that people have lost every photo they own. In the years gone by, the family photo album would be the single source of storage, but in 2013, there’s really no excuse to have one copy.
Let’s take a look at the online services you have available to ensure those photos are backed up safely in the cloud.
Flickr
Before Facebook, Flickr was the largest photo sharing site on the net. After Marissa Mayer took over the CEO position, Flickr has undergone a significant change. They now offer 1TB of storage free.
This means you can use it as your photo archive and yes you can set these as private. This allows you to share with friends, family and public where and when you decide.
Skydrive
You’ll get 7GB for free on SkyDrive and this can support any file type, so if you have important documents, this is a great option. If you subscribe to Office 365, you’ll get another 20GB and if you were on SkyDrive early, your starting point will be 25GB. Extra storage is pretty cheap if you’re like me and have a digital photo collection that dates back to 2002 and is around 40GB. If you’re running Windows 8.1, it’s easy to move photos to the Skydrive folder in Explorer that will then sync to your online storage.
Google Drive
Essentially the same functionality as above, but if you already live in the Google, then Google Drive is for you.
Carbonite
If you want to ensure not just your photos, but everything on your computer is backed up, you might want to look at Carbonite as an option. Given the volume of data and our stupid non-NBN internet connections, this can take weeks.
Remember with any of these services, its easy to upload digital photos, but what about those in albums. If you haven’t already, its time to digitise them. This can be a tedious process and as a quick and dirty, you could systematically take photos of them with your smartphone.
Please backup, there’s nothing worse that talking to someone who has lost photos, whether its through hard drive failure or fire, it’s often gone forever. The good news is there are much better storage methods than the photo album. Always, always make sure your photos are not in one location.
