So I lost all my pictures. About 7 years worth. (Somewhere in 2005, cellphones started having serious cameras, which is when ppl really started taking a serious amount of pictures).
This has happened to me about 4 years ago. I keep my iPhoto library on an external hard drive, and when it happened the first time, I had a backup on a second drive. Honestly, i had no idea, and I almost cried with excitement, and of course, i did not learn from this crisis, and continued to live my life with only one copy of my files.
Years later, in 2012, my hard drive started actin up. It happened again. And this time, there was no true backup. I post a LOT of my pictures on Facebook, and I sync my iPhone with about a year's worth of pictures, so it's not like everything was totally gone. But this was definitely a wake-up call for me. It's time to get serious about back up. And i don't mean back up as in putting things on hard drives (which can all be lost in a fire), I mean serious off-site back up in a cloud somewhere.
So the big choices are the following:
Box.com
DropBox
Mozy
iCloud (from Apple)
SkyDrive (from Microsoft)
Google Drive
Let's go over my basic needs:
1. I don't want a backup solution that requires me to remember to click on something, or drag something somewhere, etc. I have a bad memory and poor discipline for these things. (Imagine putting it off for months, and losing an entire summer trip's worth of photos).
2. I would like a desktop Mac client, i.e., software that I can install on my computer that works in the background and is regularly syncing my files to the cloud server.
3. If i have to pay for service, it has to be as inexpensive as possible. And by that I mean single-digit cheap.
So let's go!
Box.com is awesome, but the Mac desktop client requires a Business account, which costs $15/mo. There's also the issue where Box doesn't allow files that are larger than 2GB, even on Business accounts, and that irks me. It should irk you too.
Cost: $15/mo (100GB)
DropBox is (for this purpose) even better than Box. You get a desktop client for free, and it works phenomenally well and seamlessly with Mac OS. But you only get a few GB with a free account, so upgrading will be necessary for storing your photo library (which you SHOULD do, because photos can NOT be recovered when your hard drive crashes. And it will.) The problem is that DropBox's prices aren't that great. Their cheapest paid service is $10/mo, and that's just not cuttin it for me.
Cost: $10/mo (100GB)
Mozy is super cool, and works just like DropBox, except their solution is more geared towards backup rather than just cloud storage. Their pricing is decent, but not the best.
Cost: $6/mo (50GB)
iCloud is made by Apple and therefore simple and amazing, and is actually surprisingly inexpensive. Unfortunately, their storage options (even their most expensive one at $100/yr) is only 50GB, which is just not enough for me. Also, they currently don't have an actual cloud storage solution (like a folder you can access files from).
Cost: about $8.33/mo (50GB)
SkyDrive is a Microsoft product. In my book, that makes them lose. But, in all seriousness, they probably have the best offering (even price-wise) on this list, but they force you to pay a yearly subscription in a lump sum if you're trying to get paid service, and their maximum storage capacity is 100GB (which is my personal minimum). My real reason for being against lump sums is that this market seems to change a lot, and new features come out for different providers. I wouldn't want to be stuck with the same obsolete service for a whole year.
Google Drive is my favorite. It's very cheap, and you don't have to pay in a lump sum like SkyDrive or iCloud. It has a desktop client that is identical to DropBox, but has the advantage of having an awesome web interface, which allows collaborative editing on documents (imagine 4 ppl working on the same document at the same time). Also, their maximum storage (if you ever feel the crazy need) is 16 TERAbytes. Woah.
Cost: $5/mo (100GB)
Google Drive = winner.
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