The way we handle pictures has certainly evolved over time. 10 years ago, when cloud service providers were just evolving, most of us didn’t even know what the term meant let alone how we could use the cloud. If you are young you may not remember the excitement of getting your holiday photos developed and then spending hours sticking them into an album. You may not even recall storing them on a USB and play them through a digital photo frame. Fast forward to today and now we take pictures at the touch of a screen viewing them immediately and re-taking them until we are happy with them. What do we do with them then? Well many of us say we will get them printed off but we rarely do. Our images tend to stay on your phone until a time when we have 5 minutes to go through and sort them. Before that stage you usually start to see your phone groaning under the memory of so many images at which point you need somewhere to keep them safe.
What would you do if you lost all your pictures?
If you don’t back up your personal photos anywhere just stop for a minute and think what you would do if all of a sudden you lost them all. Perhaps your phone might get wiped, dropped down the toilet or heaven forbid it gets stolen. Then you may lose those memories and important moments and if you don’t have them backed up there is a chance they are gone forever. We live our lives with our phones not very far away. Every moment can be captured on camera from a baby’s first steps to that unusual moment you just have to capture.
For parents with children, most of your phone storage is probably pictures of the kids. For those who enjoy a busy social life, your images are probably selfies of you and your friends in several different situations. Most of us rely on our phones as our cameras now. Where once we would have a small digital camera for those special occasions and holidays now the phone goes everywhere.
Make sure you have a backup solution.
If you do like to take lots of pictures you need to ensure that you keep them backed up. They are your memories and losing them would be terrible. So how do you store them? Well, you choose a decent cloud storage solution that will sync with your phone and give you somewhere to store all your photos. If you already back up your pictures to your laptop then give yourself the added protection of online photo storage. You never know when you might want to find a picture in a hurry. If you back up to a laptop and then delete from your phone you have to go into the laptop to see that image again.
Choosing the right cloud solution for online photo storage.
Once you have decided to back up your pictures you need to choose a cloud storage solution that suits your requirements. If you only have a few pictures to upload then a free plan with limited space will suit your needs. There are a few online storage providers that offer a limited 2GB or 3GB limit with no time limit or those that offer a plan for a limited amount of time. With online photo storage, security is not as much as a worry as with your sensitive information and documents. There is no need to worry about your data being compromised. What you do need to consider though is the reputation of the company that you are going to use and that they back up their backups. Most good cloud storage companies have several backups in case they should experience an issue with one of their servers.
There are cloud storage providers who specifically aim their solutions at storing photos. These services are well worth investigating. What you want is a safe and reliable, cost-effective solution that automatically backs up your files either at regular intervals or as soon as you take a new picture. Once you have a reliable provider and your images are being regularly synced you never have to worry about losing a moment again.
