It was not until my honey took off with the older two children for a ski trip that I found the time to tackle the task of organizing and backing up all the photos on my computer. I had to do it because I had so many photos on my computer, my computer was running out of memory and slowing down. I needed to back them up in case my computer crashed, and I had to get them off my computer hard-drive, to free up space.
I started with the idea that I would subscribe to a general back-up service to back-up all my folders, including my pictures. I looked into and signed-up for both iDrive and Mozy. The problem with these services, however, is that they do not allow you to view your photos online. So, once you upload or back-up your Pictures folder, they sit online, invisible, until you re-download and restore the pictures folder to your hard-drive.
general back-up services, like MOZY or iDRIVE, will not let you view your pictures online.
you back them up to a folder, where they remain invisible, until you re-download them.
I then started looking into the special photo backup services. I had used Snapfish in the past, but Snapfish’s interest is in getting you to buy prints, not store your photos. So, Snapfish will delete your photos after a certain amount of time, if you do not continuously order more prints. Snapfish also charges you a per image fee to re-download images to your computer hard-drive.
SNAPFISH will delete your photos if you don’t keep ordering prints & will charge you a fee for each photo you want to re-download.
In my quest, I learned that a lot of the companies that were around three years ago, are gone – a disheartening discovery. A few years back, CNET recommended a company called ProtectMyPhotos.com, which is now out of business. HP offered a back-up service, and then discontinued this service, giving people 30 days notice to re-download their files, before HP would delete them. And, this was a paid HP service. A classic move.
There are really four other options at our disposal: Picasa, Flikr, PhotoBucket, or SmugMug. These are the four major services that allow you to back-up your photos online. Picassa is owned by Google, Flikr by Yahoo, PhotoBucket by Fox, and SmugMug is an independent family-owned business.
Since SmugMug is a relatively new, and small company, I would only use them as a secondary back-up. The back-up service costs $40 per year, allows for high-res uploads and downloads, and is easy-to-use. But, they do make money when you order prints. Their printing service was the most expensive at $0.19 per 4×6 print.
Flikr and PhotoBucket were the next options I tried. Right off the bat, the one thing that I did not like was the fact that both services are primarily focused on photo-sharing not photo-backup. I get the worried feeling that somehow my family photos are going to end up in the public’s general sharing pool. With both services, it was difficult to figure out how to opt-out of the sharing. I couldn’t figure out how to do it with PhotoBucket.
My next stop was Google’ Picasa. Picasa is both a desktop client as well as a web-based backup service. Once you download Picasa, it serves as your photo-viewing tool. So, when you click on a photo, the photo will open up in Picasa. I am not a big fan of all the frills, but Picasa does have face-recognition technology, which I understand they purchased the patent to. You can label the family members in your photos, and then search for photos of that person. I can think of a handful of times when this might be useful (searching for photos of children for the yearbook, etc.). You can then checkmark the folders you want to sync to the web. And, Picasa will quietly work in the back-ground syncing your photos to the Picasa online back-up service. Picasa will give you 1 Gig of free storage, which is 10x what Flikr will give you, and 2x what PhotoBucket will give you. The upgrade is also by far the cheapest. Only $5 for 20 Gigs worth of storage, compared to Flikr and PhotoBucket’s $24.95 per year for unlimited storage. I backed up five years of photos (original high-res size), about four thousand pictures, and am only using about 5 Gigs. I also trust Google not to pull a fast one on consumers. To understand the trust that consumers are giving them with their photos. To be a little nicer. (You can also order prints from one of many print services: Walgreens, Snapfish, RITZPIX, Shutterfly, Lifepics, fotoflot, or American Greetings).
A snapshot of what my backed-up files look like on the web (secure to me only):
