Adding my 2 cents on how I approach storing important family photos:
1. Minimize footprint. Keep only the photos that matter; this usually ends up being the ones with you or a loved one in the picture. I spent a weekend consolidating and reduced all my photos for the last 20 years down to 15GB.
2. Use 1 consumer-grade service like Google Photos for easy day-to-day access and sharing; just makes life easier for you and your loved ones to access memories on-demand. This can be substituted with any privacy-friendly alternative or young service like Stingle.
3. Use 1 business-grade storage solution for an off-site backup. Business-grade is critical b/c it enhances the relationship and SLA the provider gives you. I use AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive; it's free to upload, cheap to store ($0.00099/GB/month), and a bit pricey to retrieve ($0.09/GB for egress). This is my last-resort/lifeline if everything else goes wrong and I need to get my data again. To save on per-file upload fees, I zip up pictures by album or year and use 7Zip or Keka to encrypt the zip with a password using AES-256 for added privacy. Also remember, AWS is creating at least 3 copies of your data across 3 AZs in one region!
4. Keep a copy of the pictures at home on an NAS, hard drive, or better yet your computer if you have the space. I already use Time Machine to auto backup my entire Mac on an external drive so this gives me in total 2 copies of my pictures (one on laptop and one on time machine backup).
In total this gives me 6 total copies of my pictures:
- 1x Off-site Google Photos
- 3x Off-site AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive
- 1x On-site Laptop
- 1x On-site Laptop's Time Machine Backup
I'm not too concerned if one service provider loses my pics or revokes my access; plenty more copies!
Please remember this only works if you religiously follow step 1. This will be an expensive and almost impractical setup if you enjoy holding onto 5TB+ worth of photos.
1. Minimize footprint. Keep only the photos that matter; this usually ends up being the ones with you or a loved one in the picture. I spent a weekend consolidating and reduced all my photos for the last 20 years down to 15GB.
2. Use 1 consumer-grade service like Google Photos for easy day-to-day access and sharing; just makes life easier for you and your loved ones to access memories on-demand. This can be substituted with any privacy-friendly alternative or young service like Stingle.
3. Use 1 business-grade storage solution for an off-site backup. Business-grade is critical b/c it enhances the relationship and SLA the provider gives you. I use AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive; it's free to upload, cheap to store ($0.00099/GB/month), and a bit pricey to retrieve ($0.09/GB for egress). This is my last-resort/lifeline if everything else goes wrong and I need to get my data again. To save on per-file upload fees, I zip up pictures by album or year and use 7Zip or Keka to encrypt the zip with a password using AES-256 for added privacy. Also remember, AWS is creating at least 3 copies of your data across 3 AZs in one region!
4. Keep a copy of the pictures at home on an NAS, hard drive, or better yet your computer if you have the space. I already use Time Machine to auto backup my entire Mac on an external drive so this gives me in total 2 copies of my pictures (one on laptop and one on time machine backup).
In total this gives me 6 total copies of my pictures:
- 1x Off-site Google Photos
- 3x Off-site AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive
- 1x On-site Laptop
- 1x On-site Laptop's Time Machine Backup
I'm not too concerned if one service provider loses my pics or revokes my access; plenty more copies!
Please remember this only works if you religiously follow step 1. This will be an expensive and almost impractical setup if you enjoy holding onto 5TB+ worth of photos.