I’ve started thinking about a photo project whereby I would get all the photos and videos of Colin into one place. As all these things do, it’s turning into something bigger than I’d anticipated, so I thought I would reach out to see what expertise there is on photo archiving in this group. If that doesn’t work, I guess I’ll spread my net to my friends on Facebook.
The goal is simple: I want all the pictures and images of him in one place. Maybe I can even get them onto a USB stick (or some other medium) so we could look at them on our TV. However, as I started researching this, it dawned on me that it would be a good idea to archive all of our family photos in one place, as opposed to the multiple laptops and phones across which they’re currently spread.
To be clear, I’m not against cloud archiving, so I’ll take ideas about that as well. But my primary goal is to have an archive (and a backup) I keep here in the house.
Now, my research keeps prodding me towards network-attached storage (NAS) options, which do seem very nice until I realize that setting one up would set me back about 500 euros. That seems like a lot of money to spend just so I can pull up pictures any time from anywhere (as opposed to walking somewhere and plugging a hard drive into my machine). So, I’d appreciate thoughts on that.
The next hurdle is that we are a mixed family – PC and Mac. As such, I am looking for suggestions on the best options to:
- set up an archive
- set it up so that the photos can be saved together and accessible from both machines
- make it so that it can be backed up easily
As a bonus, this setup would:
- be accessible from anywhere (though a 500-euro price tag would give us some pause)
- and regularly update every time it was synched with the photo programs on our phones/laptops
And I assume, after all that is done, I would then create a special folder of Colin photos and videos. But if there is a faster way to that goal, I’m all ears. Just remember, I’m pretty technologically ignorant, so I’ll take whatever advice you have, but dumb it down as much as possible.
Google Photos is a great free option that works across devices. Furthermore, you can pay €2/month for 100GB of storage space, which is a much better price per GB than most other (maybe all?) storage services.
I have been using Shutterfly to archive and organize my photos since I first went digital in 2003 – 17 years later, I’ve had no issues, and regularly make photo albums on their platform that are good if you want something tangible to look through. As backup, I save my photos on an external hard drive, from which I upload the photos to Shutterfly’s site (which is free).
I recommend finding a good cloud service and saving to an external hard drive with plenty of space, which should be checked regularly and migrated to a new one at about three years or so. Solid state also is preferable. Be sure to read the terms on the cloud service: can they reuse your photos, what happens if they shut down, etc.
I don’t know anything about this company nor is this an endorsement but might be worth checking out: https://www.forever.com/historian
Good luck!