How important is cloud storage for photos vs local?

biggles

2[H]4U
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Jul 25, 2005
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I am advising a family member who is not that familiar with tech. He has been using Verizon Cloud to backup family photos. Verizon Cloud is expensive vs alternatives, and they have not given him good customer service in the past. I think he would be better off backing up the photos onto his Windows laptop. Would it be better to use a cloud service like Google Drive or Dropbox? Or is local backup equally good, so it comes down to personal preference?

For folks here who do choose cloud backup for smartphone pictures, which service do you use and why did you select it?
 
Being an Office 365 subscriber, I love that I have 1TB of cloud storage (5TB total between the family accounts). If only it can backup my iDevices like Google plans on doing with Google One. I don’t know why I would spend more $ on cloud storage on Apple or Google when I have plenty still on Microsoft’s OneDrive.
 
For the sake of user simplicity I would stick with the cloud. I don't think google drive supports this anymore, but I believe dropbox can still automatically upload all pictures to the cloud as they are taken.
 
I use Google Photos for me and the wife. Free unlimited storage. Sure there's a tradeoff with them compressing them down to 12MP (which for us is more than adequate) but free and unlimited win out. That said I've looked into self-hosting with NextCloud and the like and while I could do it the additional bullshit like ZFS pools, dead drive replacement, taking backups just isn't worth the hassle for me but YMMV.

In case of OP though something like Google Photos is probably the best option since it's free and unlimited.
 
I almost forgot. Amazon offers full-resolution unlimited photo storage included with your prime account.

So I backup to OneDrive full resolution, google photos free compressed, and amazon photos full resolution (which needs to be synced right now). I also have a local nas that backup my photos as well. I don’t think I’m losing any photos from my phone...
 
Backing them up to a service you already pay for is worth while. Even better if you have unlimited data from your carrier. We back up to the one drive with our office sub. And I'll get the wife to back up to the Amazon primebservice as we have prime. With megapixels soon to become gigapixels free and unlimited might go away.
 
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