I'm wondering how other moms manage their photos? Almost every picture of my family is digital, and is stored on my computer. A few years ago, my laptop died, and I had to transfer my pics to an external hard drive. I have never seen them since, but I assume and hope they are there if I ever get around to doing something with them. Now, I have a few more years worth of photos on my new laptop. I would really like to save them online somewhere that they can be accessed easily in case something happens to my current computer. I love digital photography, but it is worrisome that every photo you take can disappear with computer trouble. If anyone has a suggestion, and information about a site they like, I would appreciate it so much!
I have a TON on Facebook... Not technically a photo storage site, but it works for me! lol. Plus, they are in a place where they can be enjoyed by everyone instead of just sitting on some website... lonely... unviewed... (lol.)
Other than that, I back up all of my pics on an external hard drive. I lost several years worth of pictures when my old computer crashed, and I don't want to take that risk again!
An online backup system or external drive backup system is not the same thing as permanent long-term storage. I am a little frustrated with this because technology is constantly evolving. There is no guarantee that some company that you store online with will be around in a decade. I was using Apple Mobile Me service and had several photos albums and hundreds of photos stored online. Mobile Me is no longer available. Good thing I had the originals here. And, there's no guarantee that your new computer in 20 years will be able to read that external hard drive. So, I would consider backing up to an external drive or DVDs, etc and storing them somewhere safe. And revisit the backups every five years to make sure you can still access them and see if they need to be transferred to a newer device.
I use Shutterfly. I take a TON of pictures, and store all on an external hard drive but I store all of my really good ones and favorites on Shutterfly. It's free and has unlimited storage. Then I can securely share my site with family/friends and they can order prints right off the site if they want. That's where I order my prints from and then every year I make a photo album of all the fav's from the year. Their photo album templates are awesome. Since everything is in one place it's super easy. I love the security features they have. I would definitely not use facebook as a storage solution..they have not yet figured out what photo security is.
Mine are several places. I have them all on my laptop, and everything on my laptop (files, photos, etc.) is synced to sugarsync.com, a cloud. I also upload most of my photos, all of the good ones, to shutterfly.com and create calendars, photobooks, or print photos. The photos are stored there. I also share a ton of photos on Facebook. For me to lose my photos, a lot of sites would have to crash, and even then, I have hard copies of the best of the photos in the photobooks and calendars (or the few I print out and frame).
I agree with Shutterfly. They have all our pics since our wedding in 2004 and through two kids:) Plus, if you ever have a catastrophic loss (fire, flood, etc.), you can (for a fee) get them to burn copies of your files for you. I keep them on CD/DVD, some SD cards, external hard drive, a few on FB and all on Shutterfly.
I have an external hard drive, and I download all pics to Shutterfly. I've heard great things about Dropbox, but have never used it.
