One of my worst experiences personally and professionally is having a hard drive fail. This happened in 2014 and I mostly lost a lot of personal photos. I had a great system of backing up my clients’ photos online, but like they say “always a bridesmaid, never a bride.” I always put my photos on the back burner. Because of that experience, I believe everybody needs a cloud backup plan for family photos.
Since then, I’ve invested in a massive external drive (any tech geeks out there…it’s a Thunderbay Raid 5 system). Basically, it has multiple drives. If one fails, I can replace it and the system will rebuild and still have all of my original files and photos.
But…what if something failed on the hard drive and it couldn’t be replaced? What if a house fire or storm damaged our home and my drives?
I’d lose out on 14 years of memories for me and my clients.
Preserve your memories
I now use Backblaze for my cloud backup storage. Two of my old hard drives started to fail last month and it took days to try to restore them. It never fully recovered. I had already purchased a new 24TB hard drive and started moving over files, but still had a large amount left to transfer.
I quickly ordered a copy of all of my files (about 6TBs) on a hard drive from Backblaze. It was shipped and arrived in four days. I can ship the hard drive back for a nearly full refund.
I still mourn over some of those lost photos of my grandfather, like this one of him in his favorite car. I only have a small low-resolution file. I also lost some photos of Baxter and Lily modeling for me for Christmas. I am so grateful to not have to fear losing out on any more memories.
Backblaze is $9 a month. If you use this link you (and I) will get a free month.
Protecting your legacy
If you do opt for this easy cloud backup, consider writing down your username and password and storing them with your will, passports, and other important documents. Your memories and photos are a legacy for your family. Make sure they are protected.
Bonus tip:
I have our wedding photos and several years of family photos on CDs and USBs. I have moved copies to my external drive so they will now be backed up by Backblaze. I also keep those CDs and USBs in a fire and water-proof box where we keep other important documents.
Most computers no longer have the option to include a CD/DVD drive. If you have old photos on those, consider sending them to a professional service to move onto a USB-C device and then storing them on your cloud-based backup system.