Online photo storage?

[MrMorgan]

I have thousands of photos on several different drives. They have never been sorted or properly labelled, and now some of them appear corrupt. In the days of old I would burn to dvd, but it is painfully slow and no guarantee they will last.

Anyone use an online storage and/or organizing service? I have seen photobucket and flickr photos sent to me in email, but it looks like many of those are shrunk down, so you would lose the print capability.

 

[teeroy]

I use an external hard drive, keeps them original size and safe as long as you are only using the drive for pictures.

 

[MrMorgan]

I use an external hard drive, keeps them original size and safe as long as you are only using the drive for pictures.

That's kind of how I'm running now. My desktop computer crapped out last year, so I pulled the drives and put them into a twin external case. I try to dump the laptop onto it every once in a while.

I was thinking that an online storage setup would be good insurance in case of fire, flood, theft, etc.

I am thinking of getting a mac, so maybe I'll end up playing with the photos more. That seems to be a side effect of a mac.

 

[teeroy]

That's kind of how I'm running now. My desktop computer crapped out last year, so I pulled the drives and put them into a twin external case. I try to dump the laptop onto it every once in a while.

I was thinking that an online storage setup would be good insurance in case of fire, flood, theft, etc.

I am thinking of getting a mac, so maybe I'll end up playing with the photos more. That seems to be a side effect of a mac.

I use photobucket as well, but like you mentioned, they shrink the photos. there are online backup services like carbonite, I've never tried it tho.

 

[Steve D]

Dropbox is pretty good. You get 2 gig's free, but if you need more you can pay for up to 100 gig's. http://www.dropbox.com/pricing

It's nice because you just put your files in the dropbox folder and it'll automatically upload/update everything in that folder and if you accidentally delete you have a month to recover them (unlimited time with the paid service apparently). Only flaw I think is that you can't just pick any existing folder and have it sync - everything has to go into the "My Dropbox" folder.

The neat thing is, you can sync files to your extra machines that you already use for back ups AND online all at once.

As far as free services go though... if you find a good one that doesn't screw up pictures (compress or shrink) I'd like to know too.

 

[gordhunt]

cheap and unlimited

 

[AirNorth1]

Photobucket & DropBox are both good.

Most people don't know it but provided by your isp account comes Free Webspace.

Shaw & Telus both provide you with free online storage.

With that storage you can upload picures, documents such as resumes etc. webpages...

Once you upload your pictures, documents webpage etc. you just send the link to whoever you wish.

This is all free.
You simply need to open your Telus or Shaw Filemanager and start uploading.

Getting started

Telus >

Shaw > Shaw Webspace

 

[maxwell]

why not just setup your own FTP server with godaddy.com or something of the likes.

20$ a year you can get 100-500gb of space and you can drag and drop your folders on there like its a hard drive.

 

[MrMorgan]

Thank maxwell, I'll check it out.

 

[RETODD]

why not just setup your own FTP server with godaddy.com or something of the likes.

20$ a year you can get 100-500gb of space and you can drag and drop your folders on there like its a hard drive.

20 buck is not bad...you TELUS Webspace is only 100MB but is included with your service.

 

[RETODD]

Photobucket & DropBox are both good.

Most people don't know it but provided by your isp account comes Free Webspace.

Shaw & Telus both provide you with free online storage.

With that storage you can upload picures, documents such as resumes etc. webpages...

Once you upload your pictures, documents webpage etc. you just send the link to whoever you wish.

This is all free.
You simply need to open your Telus or Shaw Filemanager and start uploading.

Getting started

Telus >

Shaw > Shaw Webspace

TELUS Webspace works slick...lemme know if you want to knwo how to upload. (100MB max)

 

[maxwell]

problem with 100mb is thats like one weekends worth of photos.

 

[RETODD]

problem with 100mb is thats like one weekends worth of photos.

Yip...agree totally...I post em so the boys can download the full images then clear them off next time...good way to share.

 

[MrMorgan]

I don't mind buying service or even extra drives. My biggest problem is going through historical ones and sorting, naming, etc. I tried picasa once and I swear it corrupted half my photos. It adds a tag or something, then when I moved a buch outside of picasa and then uninstalled it, they are all corrupted.

I may try a cheap macbook (used) for the wife and see if iphoto is any better for sorting, naming, etc. Eveyone raves about macs.

 

[RETODD]

I don't mind buying service or even extra drives. My biggest problem is going through historical ones and sorting, naming, etc. I tried picasa once and I swear it corrupted half my photos. It adds a tag or something, then when I moved a buch outside of picasa and then uninstalled it, they are all corrupted.

I may try a cheap macbook (used) for the wife and see if iphoto is any better for sorting, naming, etc. Eveyone raves about macs.

You can't go wrong with iPhoto...it doesn't phuck whit your pictures.

 

[BrownEyes420]

I have two suggestions for external storage: 1. There are really big external drives out there that you can get terabytes of space starting around $200 and some more expensive with tons of storage. 2. You can also get smaller flash drives (portable keys, memory sticks, etc.) that can hold lots of pics and docs for backing up, they now have a fair amount of gigs & prices have come down since they first came out. Depends where you want to store them and how much you want to pay. Good luck.