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I’ve got 200gb of photos on Picturelife and they’re not backed up: Am I nuts?

I was evangelising Picturelife to Ben and Rafe whilst we were recording some 361 Degrees podcast episodes recently. I explained that I had just over 200gb of photos (38,000 images, 1,500 videos) and that I was absolutely delighted with the user experience.

Ben asked if I had them backed up.

I said no.

Of course not. They’re backed up on Amazon.

I pay $15/month for the 300gb account which includes backup ‘automatically’ — i.e. it’s taken as read. When the Picturelife team stick my data on Amazon, they’re trusting Amazon to take care of the data.

This is, surely, as secure as you can get?

Yes?

No. That was Ben and Rafe’s view. They think I should have a local copy. They don’t think I should rely on a third party company, who is relying on Amazon.

There’s a point there, I think.

Ben commented that with this particular type of data (i.e. cherished memories) I shouldn’t be taking any chances at all.

I tend to agree.

Indeed it’s rather stressful to consider the possibility of losing the data entirely.

So what do I do?

I’ve put a note on the Picturelife support forums to ask for clarity. I’ve asked if they’d consider offering a ‘backup’ option. I’d happily pay. In fact my demand for this is nigh-on inelastic. I need it.

What do you think? Am I nuts? Or can I rely on Picturelife-and/or-Amazon to always be there for me?

7 COMMENTS

  1. I’d say absolutely you need a local copy.

    You don’t know what’s going on under the hood in Picturelife.

    It’s a complete pain in the doo-dahs and you’ll have to consider maintaining maybe two local copies (because drives fail).

    Crashplan could help with this part. It’s also got a nice feature where two buddies can back up to each other’s PCs over the Internet.

  2. You’re nuts! I use drop box. But everything is on my computer too & then on my external hard drive. At the start of this year from a PC problem I lost 6 years of pics & vids. And that is the most upsetting thing when memories are lost

  3. Absolutely need a local copy. And if data’s that valuable, ensure you have another copy in a different location! Like Joseph said, Crashplan is a good solution. Hand a member of your family a Tb hard-drive and make sure it’s connected to their computer.

    Remember sod’s law. As soon as you mention worrying about losing your data the chances of it happening within weeks rises, oh, at least 50%.

  4. Picture life is not a backup solution. It’s a convenient way to manage and share photos across different devices. But it’s NOT a backup solution. I use backblaze to back up my hard disk and external drive-hard disk crush and they will send you ALL of your filled on USB or hard drive. Or download from backup files for 3£ a month. Of course you can also be paranoid and copy files to another hard disk or NAS storage but that takes a bit of work. External HD, NAS and backblaze is enough for me.

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