Saving The Memories

Part of preparing for a Disney trip is to clear off all our cameras so they are empty and ready. That could mean clearing 30-50GB of video and pictures! What do you do with all these priceless memories?

I have struggled to find a good answer for years.

The first thing I do is burn two copies onto data DVD. One DVD goes to my desk draw at my office at work (offsite backup), and the second goes to storage at home. The DVD is my emergency last resort archive.

Next, I would put a copy of the data on an external hard drive, but I found external hard drives to be unreliable.

I decided to look at cloud storage options. I purchased a 1 terabyte Google Drive for only $10 per month. I can access this drive from anywhere in the world and from any device (including my phone). I can even shared them with family and friends. With 1TB, I will never fill that drive!

The only drawbacks I have found to the google drive? If you have a slow Internet connection it can take a long time to move data in or out of the cloud. I recently uploaded 6GB through broadband and it took around 15 hours. Next, when you download data it often puts it into a zip archive that you have to extract (a minor inconvenience). Finally, suppose you get 400GB moved into the cloud and want to get a back for yourself, or, want to transfer to another provider? There is no good answer other than download the 400GB (which would take a month+) and then upload it to a new provider ( which would take a month).

Those drawbacks aside, Google Drive has been a good option for me. It has allowed me to confidently store all my pictures and video and have access whenever and wherever I want.