Backing up computer files and digital photos is an absolute must. Don't even try to argue against that point. Too many people lose their valuable data when their one and only hard drive fails. With the low costs for portable external drives and for cloud storage, there is no good excuse for not backing up your files.
I have used Dropbox pretty much since its inception, and I really like it. Dropbox just works. And once set up it works behind the scenes with no need to manually do anything. Dropbox offers 2 gb of free space, with ways for adding additional free space; and of course they offer additional space at a cost. If you only have a few gb of data, Dropbox might be your best bet. If you have terabytes of data though you might take a look at Amazon.
For the past few months I have been using the unlimited all data Amazon cloud storage. As of July 2015 I have close to 6 tb of data stored in my cloud storage. Most of this data is with photos, but I also have a large amount of documents, videos, large application specific files (i.e., iMovie libraries), and audio files. The unlimited cloud storage runs $60 a year. Amazon also offers unlimited storage for just photos at $12 a year (free if an Amazon Prime member).
By far what impresses me most about the Amazon Cloud is the browser organization. It is clean looking and extremely easy to move and rename files and folders once they have been uploaded. The Amazon Cloud Drive desktop app is also quite minimalist. Simply drag your files/folders into the app window and they instantly start uploading to your cloud storage. One improvement I would love to see is a dropbox style of sync with the Amazon Cloud Drive that would automatically keep folders in the cloud in sync with the folders on my hard drive.
The biggest fail with the Amazon Cloud is their iOS app. It seems to be geared just for their photo storage, and it is a mess. For the life of me I cannot figure out what the app does. Photos show up, but there is no rhyme or reason that I can decipher for their organization.
If you are not using online cloud storage, whether it is Apple's iCloud, dropbox, Amazon, or the dozens of other options out there . . I strongly recommend that you start using one of these right away. External drives are great for backup that you can keep on hand. I have dozens of these drives that I rely on daily, and there have been a number of times when my main hard drive failed and I was able to get back up and running with little relative ease. But when it comes to backup I tend to be pretty anal about it. I don't want to lose someone's wedding photos a day after taking them, so I back up the original files in multiple ways. Part of that backup process now involves immediately uploading the raw files to my Amazon cloud storage. If my house burns down or someone breaks in and steals my gear, I at least know that those files are safely stored off site, along with all of my other data.
Peace of mind. $60 a year seems like a small fee for that.
Amazon Cloud Drive
