Google Storage.

[tighterse]

For the computer experts. My new phone - a Moto G - includes 50 Gb of free storage for 2 years. At present I back up my pictures on a 32 Gb flash drive and it is almost full. Would it make any sense, and would it be possible, to sync the phone to a PC and use the free Google storage as a back up? I realise that 2 years down the road I would have to look at something else but I've heard that flash drives have a limited life. Or would 32 or 64 Gb usb cards be a better solution.

[dancingbear84]

Given your penchant for personal security, I'd stick to USB sticks.
Personally all of my pics are automatically backed up from my phone to Google photos backup. They are then also copied to my pc which backs up to a server in the loft.
If I remember correctly Google photos allows you up to 15gb of free storage, which I'm not even close to yet.

In terms of backups though I'd suggest the following. 2 copies of everything you consider important. 1 at home in a safe place (like a USB key in a sealed container, that should offer some protection in the event of flood damage) 1 copy at a relatives or the car glove box or something that can be easily retrieved should there be afire or some catastrophe that causes the originals and the 1st backup to be destroyed.

Anecdotal evidence: an old work colleague lost everything once, she had 2 backups to external hdds. Lent 1 to her brother for a week. He over wrote the backup with his stuff. That week both her laptop and the other hdd backup failed. She was devastated.

The issue with the free 50gb is that after you start using 50gb you will want to carry on with it further down the line, 2years on you will not want to drop back to 15gb so people tend to start paying Google the fees for the offline storage (currently around 8 cents per gb per month)

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[frv]

I've got a few on-line in Photobucket but I save a backup of all our photos (and other files) onto a 500Gb external hard drive, I also keep them on my PC at home, my PC at work and also a series of DVD's which I archive.

[dancingbear84]

And work in IT and understand the importance of a good backup solution...

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[tighterse]

It's the offsite bit that I was thinking of. Just how to do it needs some planning. PC to phone then to Google but the phone only has an 8Gb internal storage. In fact only about 5.5 Gb is available. I think the first thing I need to do is weed out lots of the pictures. What I do at present is to download them all from the camera and I'm certain that loads of them can be discarded. That's one of the problems of digital cameras; lack of discrimination, just save everything.

[Karl]

There is a saying that if your data is not in 3 places then it isn't anywhere.

I would spread your data across different formats like cloud, flash / solid state, mechanical and disk based.

Why not go old fashioned and print some out or make photo books using one of the many print companies.

I personally have copies on DVD and on my file server which syncs to an ext USB disk.

Another option is off-site storage to a friends / family machine - as long as their internet connection is good enough
https://www.code42.com/crashplan/features/compare/

[dancingbear84]

Why not go old fashioned and print some out or make photo books using one of the many print companies.

How gloriously 1990!

[Karl]

haha - gone are the days of negatives. I'm sure you wouldn't need to back those up!

[tighterse]

Two problems solved in one. Transferred most of my pics to a Blackberry Playbook. Only used 25 out of 54 spare Gb since it won't accept Canon Raw or Tiff files. And I still have another Playbook to use. Works like a charm when used as a CEO pacifier. She's been sitting for hours going through about 15 years worth of pictures, absolute silence - wonderful. Better than a dummy and longer lasting.