[SOLVED] Large Photo Backup

[Burner1061]

I had been thinking about this for a while, but Google has forced my hand.

I have a large photo backup through Google Photos, tens of thousands of photos from my family spanning over 20 years (I don't know how many exactly, it doesn't tell me), and I got an email today from Google basically stating no more free unlimited photo backup. I really like the Google Photos app, the location features, face recognition, but I'm not paying for terabytes of cloud storage. I'm willing to pay for hard drives that I own personally, but are there ways to set up like a system that works like google photos but the photos are saved to a personal computer locally? I consider myself good with tech but this is a whole new area for me. All info is appreciated, thank you.

 

[CountMike]

I had been thinking about this for a while, but Google has forced my hand.

I have a large photo backup through Google Photos, tens of thousands of photos from my family spanning over 20 years (I don't know how many exactly, it doesn't tell me), and I got an email today from Google basically stating no more free unlimited photo backup. I really like the Google Photos app, the location features, face recognition, but I'm not paying for terabytes of cloud storage. I'm willing to pay for hard drives that I own personally, but are there ways to set up like a system that works like google photos but the photos are saved to a personal computer locally? I consider myself good with tech but this is a whole new area for me. All info is appreciated, thank you.

You can always copy/move those files to a local HDD and set browser and programs to use it for storing.

 

[USAFRet]

I do full drive backups of all my physical drives and systems. There wouldn't be an issue of "Oh, I forgot to include that folder."
Macrium Reflect, and Full/Incremental images. Every night.

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[mdd1963]

set up a system that 'works like Google photos'?

Probably not, as a lot of sync options between devices work behind the scenes.

When it comes to one's valuable photos, however, never trust one drive, or even two. Any drive actively connected to a system is theoretically vulnerable to ransomware. Yet, external drives are not as (arguably) reliable as internal drives, at least not in my opinion.

You might be able to get a couple 8-12 TB internal drives, and a couple more external (great prices when on sale!), and form you own safe system of photo storage...with reasonable safety.(Depending on the anticipated frequency of photo access, you might just be happy with external drives, but, always have anything worthwhile stored on AT LEAST two drives...)