Preserving memories forever is really what we are talking about!
Gone are the days when people would print out all their photographs and store them in picture frames or photo albums. With digital cameras being around for a few decades now, the sheer volume of photographs that needs to be backed up can puzzle even the most tech-savvy person. People need to know that if their computer is stolen or their house floods or burns down, their family’s memories are still preserved.
Dropbox
Dropbox is a website where you can upload your digital photographs for storage. You can sign up for a free account, but they only give you 2 gigabytes to get started. This will barely be enough for people with high-resolution photos they wish to back up or even videos. There is a monthly or yearly paid subscription that you can get which will give you more storage space, but if you do not keep it up, you will lose access to your photos. One benefit of Dropbox is that you can use it for your business. It is a photographer industry-standard where they can share photos with clients. There is no need to have a paid membership if you are hiring a photographer to take family photos and drop them into Dropbox for you, but you do have to remember to download them to your computer to save them.
Google Drive
Google Drive is similar to Dropbox. It holds more volume for free than Dropbox (15 gigabytes). This may be good for families who want to preserve their more precious memories. Google Drive also have membership plans that you can get if you wish for more data storage space. It also has a sharing function. Google drive also sync is with your Google/android phone now to automatically save all media taken with the camera to Google drive. It is not automatically set up like this but its definitely a feature available for use.
External Hard Drives / USB Flash Drives
External hard drives offer a more secure solution if you desire to keep your family’s photos private. There have been instances where people have hacked into Google Drive or Dropbox, but that will not happen if you use an external hard drive or two. The problem with an external drive is that it is susceptible to the elements; they are very fragile and can break easily and can be stolen.
NAS Drive
Many people are unaware the NAS drives are the latest innovation for home use. A NAS drive is short for “Network Assisted Storage.” This network contains several different hard drives that clone each other. Its main benefit is that if one drive fails, you will still have the other ones. A NAS drive is connected to your computer network and utilizes software to make the backup process simpler. It can be a bit tricky to learn how to install the software and hardware, though. If you have a large family with a lot of digital media that you want to make sure is private, safe and can be shared easily with other family members it can be a reliable storage solution for your precious photographs and different types of digital media. You can even have your NAS send backups to cloud-based services like Dropbox and Google drive for an extra layer of protection.
Closing thoughts
Perhaps the best digital storage solution is to keep one set of photos in your online cloud account, one set on your computer, one placed on a USB drive, and one set on an external hard drive or a NAS drive. This will make sure no matter what you are good to go.