What Photo Storage Do You Use?

[Marita40]

I really dislike Photobucket and am looking for another free photo storage/sharing idea. I'd like to use some of these gray icy (boring) days of winter to purge, rearrange, and re-store my photos. I've been with Photobucket for so long that I don't know the options. Anyone have recommendations? Thanks!

 

[hesperus]

I don't know photobucket, but I have experience with 500px, and don't recommend it. 500px is rapidly turning into yet-another “social” beehive that does nothing to differ itself from others. It no longer appears to pursue high-quality images; instead, it seems to be doing everything to invite more and more photographers, whose work is, shall we say, just not that good. The average lifespan of any new upload is under 1 hour – after that, your work drowns in myriads of new uploads. The “Pulse”, the 500px rating system, is heavily rigged and in no way reflects the real popularity of your photos, and even less, their merits. Rather, it reflects a member’s networking skills and/or use of bots. You may still see many good photos on 500px, but don’t expect too much in terms of exposure/promotion. If 500px goes on doing what it does, it will very soon become the next instagram.

 

[Chris7]

I have Amazon Prime and get free unlimited photo storage. Also have iCloud and have some photos on Shutterfly for projects I have done. I have multiple external back-up drives, too.

cd :O)

 

[RockyMtn]

Google Photos is free. Works well for my needs.

 

[Meadbh]

My iPhone is my camera nowadays. All my photos are uploaded to iCloud and are available on all my Apple devices. If I want to share a specific folder I can do so via iCloud photo sharing. I do pay a couple of dollars every month for storage, but only because I want to keep thousands of photos and videos collected over the past decade. Free storage would be fine if you have a smaller collection.

Edited to add: Google Photos is good too. Nice to have a backup. And my photos just appear there as if by magic.

 

[marko]

Google Photos is free. Works well for my needs.

+1
I've long ago stopped thinking of my photos as works of art and acknowledged that they're just glorified Instamatic snapshots.

Google photos. Nice search function as well.

 

[Marita40]

I'll check out google photos. Thanks!

 

[donheff]

I have a few thousand photos on Flickr

 

[easysurfer]

Does just putting photos in a folder on a hard drive count? As that's what I do .

 

[Lsbcal]

I've long ago stopped thinking of my photos as works of art and acknowledged that they're just glorified Instamatic snapshots.

Google photos. Nice search function as well.

Yep, agree with the Instamatic comment. I don't take all that many photos nowadays and they are all with my phone now.

The photos I keep in private storage are just in a tree of Windows folders. One folder is "vacations" with the results stored in alphabetical order. So the first one might be "(A) Paris, 2003". This way when one looks at the folder with File Explorer, the results are in chronological order.

Relying on a photo storing app seems to me too dependent on that company's business model.

 

[Midpack]

Does just putting photos in a folder on a hard drive count? As that's what I do .

+1, that's what I do too. Pics don't take up that much HD space. I've got about 2500 pics, many hi-res, but the space they take up pales in comparison to my video library.

 

[DrRoy]

+1, that's what I do too. Pics don't take up that much HD space. I've got about 2500 pics, many hi-res, but the space they take up pales in comparison to my video library.

That isn't sufficient for me. DW and I take 2-3 trips a year with DSLR's shooting raw + JPEG and we come back with that many shots each time. I can only keep about 2 trips worth at a time on top of the music and other things we have on the hard drive. We keep out photos backed up on a pair of 4 terabyte external drives, so if one drive dies, we can recover from the other.

 

[stepford]

That isn't sufficient for me. DW and I take 2-3 trips a year with DSLR's shooting raw + JPEG and we come back with that many shots each time. I can only keep about 2 trips worth at a time on top of the music and other things we have on the hard drive. We keep out photos backed up on a pair of 4 terabyte external drives, so if one drive dies, we can recover from the other.

And a 4T drive costs what? About $100-150 these days. So get a few as needed. If you're deep into DSLR photography then paying a bit for RAW storage is part of the game (and a whole lot cheaper than your lens collection I'd bet).

As far as the OP's question goes, I also have a few thousand JPEGs on Flickr. It's not the greatest system, but it works and it's free.

 

[W2R]

Storage: My photos only take up 2.3 GB (not TB). I store them on my laptop hard drive, and back them up weekly onto onsite and offsite external storage devices that I own and that are physically under my control. I am still not trusting/confident enough in online options to go full bore into cloud storage. Maybe some day. This is probably a symptom of getting old.

Sharing: I use any one of several free photo sharing websites if/when needed. I don't focus on any one of them, really, and don't intentionally use them for storage.

 

[meierlde]

And a 4T drive costs what? About $100-150 these days. So get a few as needed. If you're deep into DSLR photography then paying a bit for RAW storage is part of the game (and a whole lot cheaper than your lens collection I'd bet).

As far as the OP's question goes, I also have a few thousand JPEGs on Flickr. It's not the greatest system, but it works and it's free.

I also keep my photos on local hard disks and also on flash drives. With a 256 gb flash drive costing about $60 it makes an excellent backup medium.

 

[Ronstar]

I store all of mine on an external hard drive, and publish ones I want to share on Flickr

 

[Major Tom]

I keep all mine on an internal HD, with a backup stored separately. I run a backup every few weeks. Photos I wish to share, I do so on Pbase. At the time I started using Pbase, the look of the other photo sharing sites didn't appeal (many of them still don't). I'm not really bothered about sharing my photos anymore, but keep the Pbase account in order that I can show photos on my blog by linking to photos on it.

 

[Walt34]

I keep mine on the HD, backed up every week or so, or when I shoot a lot at some family gathering. I have two external one TB drives that I alternate.

 

[savory]

Google Photos is free. Works well for my needs.

+1

 

[Sunset]

I also keep my photos on local hard disks and also on flash drives. With a 256 gb flash drive costing about $60 it makes an excellent backup medium.

+1
I use a couple of flash drives so I have duplicate copies. With the new USB 3.0 drives they are a lot faster than the old usb drives, so that helps.

I don't like online cloud storage, as the upload/download speeds can be slow, and for photo sites, how do I know they keep the original resolution ?

 

[walkinwood]

Google photos does not allow you to get a direct link to a jpg image (ie, a url with a .jpg at the end). You'll only get a link to a page that hosts the image. This limits your ability to link to your photograph on some sites - works just fine on this site.

 

[kimcdougc]

I store all my pictures on an external 4tb hard drive. DH and I no longer take pictures unless people are in them. Who wants to look at something we thought was really cool or some scenery. People might look at us in pictures but will probably just pass by the other pictures.

Food for thought.

 

[Sunset]

I store all my pictures on an external 4tb hard drive. DH and I no longer take pictures unless people are in them. Who wants to look at something we thought was really cool or some scenery. People might look at us in pictures but will probably just pass by the other pictures.

Food for thought.

Sounds like you are made for Selfies

 

[NW-Bound]

+1
I've long ago stopped thinking of my photos as works of art and acknowledged that they're just glorified Instamatic snapshots.

Google photos. Nice search function as well.

I never thought of my photos as anything more than personal mementos of places that I have been to, things that I have done, stuff that I have eaten, etc... When I want to show something here on this forum, like the Anchor Bar, the birthplace of the Buffalo wings, I upload a reduced resolution of it to photobucket, then link it here.

I store my photos on a Windows home server machine with redundant drives to protect against hard disk failures. This machine is only turned on when needed, so there's another copy of the collection on a NAS drive that is on 24/7 for easy access. This NAS server goes to sleep when inactive, spins down the drive and consumes just a few watts. My collection of financial documents and software gets the same treatment.

My photos take about 90GB, but my collection of digitized audio files is several times that. My collection of engineering software and w*rk stuff is also quite large. I guess I am still attached to my work and have not let it go.

 

[dixonge]

Many of you seem to see no need for remote, off site backups. But one fire and all your redundant drives are history.