[Lex Computer & Tech Group/LCTG] follow-up question re hard drives and long term storage

[Harry Forsdick]

Denise,

You describe that the data she wants to store are
images/pictures/photographs.  Carbonite is a general-purpose backup
system.  There are better ways to store photographs that have the online
qualities of Carbonite, but have a lot more useful features if you are
storing photographs.  Here are three of those systems:

   - Google Photos (https://www.google.com/photos/about/)
   - Amazon Photos (
   https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Photos/b?ie=UTF8&node=13234696011)
   - Apple Photos (https://www.apple.com/ios/photos/)

There are many other systems out there and it is not my intention to say
that other offerings aren't as good.  But, these three are offered by large
companies that are likely to be around for a long time, and have the
resources to keep up to date with the latest technology and features -- and
that is important.

Each of these systems will provide you with the following capabilities:

   - Online photo storage
   - Reliable backup of that storage so, depending on your trust level, you
   can count on the service to take care of backing up your valuable photos.
   - Organizing mechanisms such as folders and albums.
   - Presentation capabilities, such as slide shows, the ability to produce
   printed books of your photos, etc.
   - Higher-level capabilities such as face recognition and object
   recognition so that you can search or organize photos by automatic
   recognition from the photo itself, rather than someone manual labeling
   effort.

I personally use both Google Photos and Apple Photos.  They both are very
good and worth the modest amount of money they charge for their services.

Of course, the quality of any collection of photographs depends on how much
time you spend curating the photos.  Some of the futuristic Machine
Learning (ML) capabilities of these systems include automatic curation
where the ML system chooses the best photographs of your collection based
on analyzing how someone has selected a few photos from a lot of photos
taking into consideration things like composition, focus, colors in the
scene.  It's pretty amazing what is being done or starting to be done these
days.

Hope this answers some of your daughter's questions.

My first and last recommendation is that she do something -- she will find
out that exploring the capabilities of what can be done is very interesting
and at the same time will be a safer way of storing her photos than on her
own disks.

Regards,

-- Harry



Harry Forsdick <http://www.forsdick.com/resume/>
Lexington Photo Scanning <http://lexingtonphotoscan.com/>
Town Meeting Member Precinct 7 <http://lexingtontmma.org/>
harry at forsdick.com
www.forsdick.com
  46 Burlington St.
Lexington, MA 02420 <https://goo.gl/xZXT2F>
(781) 799-6002 (mobile) <callto:17817996002>
meet.jit.si/HarryForsdick (video)
Click <http://forsdick.weebly.com/home/my-websites> to see my other websites



On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 5:46 PM Denise <denise at rcn.com> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
>
>
> This is a follow up question re hard drives and long term storage.
>
>
>
> So my daughter has about 5-7 external hard drives and none are newer…..She
> wants a long term safer solution (like Carbonite) rather than keeping
> everything on these hard drives; as she now knows they will all fail
> eventually.
>
>
>
> The pics (only pics on all these drives) that are on these drives are on
> no computer at all, just on these hard drives.
>
>
>
> Given that Carbonite backs up your computer (and word, excel, etc.) and
> these pics are not on a computer or iphone, what’s a good option for her?
> She does not need backup for word, excel or other computer stuff.
>
>
>
> How should she get all these to transfer to a better and more long term
> solution?
>
>
>
> With Carbonite you would have to have one computer and only ONE hard drive
> connected; so that might not be the best option.
>
>
>
> thanks,
>
> Denise
>
> p.s. we’re still working on taking in the failed drive.
> ===============================================
> ::The Lexington Computer and Technology Group Mailing List::
> Reply goes to sender only; Reply All to send to list.
> Send to the list: LCTG at lists.toku.us      Message archives:
> http://lists.toku.us/private.cgi/lctg-toku.us
> To subscribe: email lctg-subscribe at toku.us  To unsubscribe: email
> lctg-unsubscribe at toku.us
> Future and Past meeting information: http://LCTG.toku.us
> List information: http://lists.toku.us/listinfo.cgi/lctg-toku.us
> This message was sent to forsdick at gmail.com.
> Set your list options:
> http://lists.toku.us/options.cgi/lctg-toku.us/forsdick@gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.toku.us/pipermail/lctg-toku.us/attachments/20211124/7f6c4bae/attachment.html>