Storage For Photos?

I have thousands of photos that I store on an external hard drive and I back up on another external hard drive.

Anyone recommend a better alternative?

I think I need cloud/google......

Any advise gratefully received

Onnha
xxxx

 

You have answered your own question.

 

Oh dear....I thought The Cloud and Google were different.
Are there any specialist clouds that are easier than others?

 

'Cloud' is the generic term for 'cloud' storage, eg Dropbox, One Drive, Google cloud and others. You just have choose to one depending on how much storage you want and whether you want it free or paid for. But I doubt you will get 2 terabytes of data in the cloud cheaper than a decent external drive. But that's easy to research.

 

Thank you. I am non the wiser really. I feel I want to put my precious photos in the cloud. I just wondered if anyone had any preferences as to which cloud was best....or which mot to use
I use Google Drive and Dropbox occasionally for my normal laptop and am a novice Mac user. My external drives are 7-8 years old (Are they compatible with Macs? I don't even know that!)
Talk about going round in circles. Need someone to point me in a sensible direction

 

If you are already using two different cloud products what exactly is it you want? You can increase the amount of storage with those two providers who are both very reputable. If you have a Windows 8 or 10 system you can have some FREE 'One Drive' cloud storage.
If your existing external drives are full, and you want a new one, just look online at amazon or ebuyer, or ebay or anywhere else for reputable brand external drives.
It is much more simple than you imagine. If you are already using those two different storage methods, which you say you are, I don't see how you can be confused about them.

 

I think I am looking for the easiest and cheapest solution in clouds so will have a look at One Drive on my laptop as I have Windows 10 on it and will look at Mac cloud storage system.



Sorry for confusing you

 

When you have worked out the approximate amount of EXTRA storage you require, you can then compare the cost of an annual subscription in cloud storage with the cost of a single large external drive.

 

Yes, I can see where you are coming from. Will keep my 2 large external hard drives but get another back up in the clouds. Oh dear I am such hard work :-(

Thank you

 

Just remember, you always have to have the internet or access to it with cloud storage. Whereas with your own drives you don't.

 

Internet access is no problem. My indecisiveness is the only problemI have!

Thanks for the help

Onnha x

 

personally, i prefer local storage and backup over any "cloud" solution, but that is just me.
as far as macs go... they can mount and read from any external hard drive formatted by a windows computer, FAT / FAT32 / NTFS. if you need to be able to write to those external hard drives from your mac, you need a 3rd party solution for NTFS formatted external drives ( macs can write to FAT formatted external drives )
paragon NTFS for mac is worth every penny you pay for it ( $20 )
https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/
it works really well and has never caused me any problems [ knocking on wood ]
good luck with it!

 

Oh...Now you have confused me again!!!! ha ha ha Not sure I can get my head around FAT NTFS and FAT32.....Have seen these words before but don't think I will ever understand. I just want computers to switch on and work...

 

lol, that is something we all want.

basically, you can hook up any external hard drive to your mac, and it will mount and you can read from it, and copy files from it. however, if you also want to copy files back to the external drive, that depends on the filesystem the external drive was formatted with. FAT ( DOS and floppy disks ) and FAT32 ( File Allocation Table ) was the old way windows computer formatted their hard drives ( win95/98/ME ) and mac computers can write to those disks natively. NTFS ( New Technology File System ) is used with win2000/XP/vista/7/8/10. macs can natively mount and read from external hard drives formatted with NTFS, but can not copy files back to them without help, hence my suggestion above. once it is installed, you forget that it is there, and any external hard drive can be used, as one would expect, regardless of the filesystem used. of course, the one exception would be hard drives formatted for use with linux, but you will probably never see one of those, so you can forget this last sentence.

good luck with it.