Transitioning to online storage solution

[PhilGF]

I have been working to keep my library and my mobile pictures online. With my Pixel 3 I'm using, of course, Google Photos {not full quality jpg} and OneDrive.

Besides the catalog and photos being stored online I have the copy on my PC, plus these photos are backed up also online with my backup {Backblaze} cloud storage. Also on my Drobo and NAS.

So I add Pixel jpg images since I don't want to duplicate on OneDrive. For my Nikon, I now have a OneDrive folder that I copy to.

So for some reason I have issues after a few files to manually move photos from the Pixel to the PC hardwired. So I'm using OneDrive to add jpg's {full quality} and then copying the DNG files from Google {full quality}.

Question for everyone is how are you adapting to moving forward to the future instead of just using online backup as secondary to your PC/Mac. This might sound confusing and fragmented and I feel that way too, just trying to adapt.

 

[Replytoken]

I am not storing my images in the the cloud, but if I did, I would still first be backing them up offline to local drives first. I have learned to have a bit of skepticism about things that are not fully in my control, like the cloud. It may be a personal bias, but I just do not have the time and energy to be also maintaining online backups at this time.

--Ken

 

[Victoria Bampton]

For me, online storage isn't quite there yet, to be my online storage solution. Much of my data lives in Dropbox or the Adobe Cloud, but it's still backed up to my local computer too.

 

[Jimmsp]

..
Question for everyone is how are you adapting to moving forward to the future instead of just using online backup as secondary to your PC/Mac. This might sound confusing and fragmented and I feel that way too, just trying to adapt.

For me, the answer is based on a few things: cost, convenience, security, and ease of use among them.
There is no way that I will put sensitive and very personal documents in the cloud.
It is like a hard drive. A hard drive will fail - so we backup. A cloud storage will be hacked, so avoid putting sensitive documents there.

I shoot a DSLR and shoot my photos in Raw, and have over 130,000 photos in my LR catalog. I do a fair amount of creative post processing in Photoshop, so I often end up with very large tiff files. I have no plans to move away from Raw, so there is a volume issue. For me, there no practical way to use the cloud as my main source of storage. As for backup, I have three external 6 TB hard drives I use for backup. I keep two at home, and one off site in a bank. Hard drives are inexpensive today.

I do use the cloud primarily to exchange files, and to post files to share.

Re Google Photos. I use this primarily for teaching classes. It fits a large number of photographers who primarily shoot with phones and point and shoots who do little or basic post processing. I have a fairly decent set of keywords in my catalog. I have tested Google photos, and it is about 90-95 % accurate on basic keywords, but doesn't handle more complex descriptions - like "moody".

I use Flickr as my sharing site.

So, I see the future as a mixture of cloud and desktop storage.