Online photo archives

[luli13]

I'm completely overwhelmed with how many pictures I have on my laptop and a few flash drives that are filled. I'd like to organize and archive them online. If you have an online source to share, please do, as well as any tips on how to best organize them on the site. Do you pay monthly; is it free; do you have to copy/paste them?? I would be willing to pay more for an easier, safer and more efficient way to store and organize. Thank you!

[infomama]

After testing both paid (smugmug) and free (shutterfly) sites I like free the best. Upload to Shutterfly at full resolution and enjoy the free storage. If your computer crashes you can order a CD with your full res pictures on them (yes you can download from Shutterfly but to the best of my knowledge they are low res images..a paid CD will be all your original hi resolution images). I've been happy with their books, mugs and calenders, too. Shutterfly has an uploader..it's easy to figure out.

[queenmama]

Snapfish will allow you to download full res images, if that matters to you.

If you're looking for simple backup without the editing and printing, go for cloud storage like Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon Cloud... There are usually no size limits and you can store documents and videos as well as photos. These types of sites all cost money.

[specialp]

After testing both paid (smugmug) and free (shutterfly) sites I like free the best. Upload to Shutterfly at full resolution and enjoy the free storage. If your computer crashes you can order a CD with your full res pictures on them (yes you can download from Shutterfly but to the best of my knowledge they are low res images..a paid CD will be all your original hi resolution images). I've been happy with their books, mugs and calenders, too. Shutterfly has an uploader..it's easy to figure out.

^^ This. I back up my pictures to an external HD and to shutterfly once a month and they are organized there the same way they are organized on my computer - year, month. (I lost a lot info in a computer crash years ago so I'm super uptight about it - I pay bills, backup my computer to external HD, then upload to shutterfly.)

[luli13]

Thanks for the suggestions. On the free sites, is there a limit to the number of pics I can store? I have uploaded to Flickr, snapfish and shutterfly before but only to use as a way to post pictures on forums or to buy prints, etc. I want to be able to do that as well as store thousands of pictures. Will those sites let me do that or would you suggest I just save to flash drives and store them in a safe place. My laptop is getting old and I want the pictures to be safe. I just don't know the easiest way to store them.

[mom2khj]

For plain old back up, I use CrashPlan and an external hard drive. I've also used Carbonite and liked them as well.

For picture storage/sharing I use a combination of Phanfare.com, Zenfolio.com and Shutterfly. Phanfare/Zenfolio (I may eventually drop one, I'm evaluating them, SmugMug was already ruled out) have all my photos. I like the way I can organize them there. Shutterfly, I only upload/share photos when I have a specific need.

[infomama]

Thanks for the suggestions. On the free sites, is there a limit to the number of pics I can store? I have uploaded to Flickr, snapfish and shutterfly before but only to use as a way to post pictures on forums or to buy prints, etc. I want to be able to do that as well as store thousands of pictures. Will those sites let me do that or would you suggest I just save to flash drives and store them in a safe place. My laptop is getting old and I want the pictures to be safe. I just don't know the easiest way to store them.
No limit for storage. You can share in numerous ways with Shutterfly including setting up your own web page through them. www.shutterfly.com/share-photos/family-websites.jsp

[luli13]

For plain old back up, I use CrashPlan and an external hard drive. I've also used Carbonite and liked them as well.

For picture storage/sharing I use a combination of Phanfare.com, Zenfolio.com and Shutterfly. Phanfare/Zenfolio (I may eventually drop one, I'm evaluating them, SmugMug was already ruled out) have all my photos. I like the way I can organize them there. Shutterfly, I only upload/share photos when I have a specific need.

So I just looked at Crashplan and I am confused. So it would still save my pics and videos at an online site or on my computer's hard drive, or on an external hard drive? Break it down and simplify if you would. Where does my info go and stay?? I am not computer savy at all. And when they offer attached drives do they send those to me :dizzy: whaaaaaaaat?!

[mom2khj]

So I just looked at Crashplan and I am confused. So it would still save my pics and videos at an online site or on my computer's hard drive, or on an external hard drive? Break it down and simplify if you would. Where does my info go and stay?? I am not computer savy at all. And when they offer attached drives do they send those to me :dizzy: whaaaaaaaat?!

They save it on their servers. You can save any files you want, not just pics/videos. I do this to backup all my stuff in case of a hard-drive failure.

They only offer to send you drives if you have a very large amount of data that would take days and days to upload initially. They'll send you a drive, you can load the initial backup to it and send it back and they'll setup the account with that "seed" backup. Then the rest would be done via your Internet connection. I didn't do this, even though I do have a large amount of data. I have the stuff backed up elsewhere, so I just slowly let it back up to their servers.

ETA - this isn't a system, where you would be able to go look at your photos and such. It's only a data backup service. We have two computers using it right now, DH's Windows desktop (it backs up his complete My Documents folder) and my MacBook, my MacBook is connected via WiFi to our external hard drive and I also backup that hard drive to our CrashPlan account (this is why I left Carbonite, at the time they didn't allow backups of external drives).

ETA again - if you're really only interested in backing up photos/videos, I would go with a traditional photo-sharing site. I was just providing the others as an alternative if you had other stuff you needed to backup.

[ahisma]

I like Flickr a lot. I pay $25/year for the pro membership, which allows me to upload / keep unlimited high resolution photos at full size.

I don't enjoy the interface of the sites aimed at selling prints as much. You can order prints on Flickr easily and I have done it often, but their core intent isn't marketing prints, which is nice IMO.

[123LuckyMom]

I don't remember the details, but I did research what it would cost to recover photos from Snapfish should I need to do so, and the cost was prohibitive. Make sure you check out all the details before committing to a plan. I still use snapfish, but not as a storage backup.