OT- photo/video copying/storage

[Leeshouldveflanked]

My dads house burnt down about 4 years ago and with it went nearly 80 years of family photos, family videos from the 1980’s, etc... to insure the same thing doesn’t happen to all of my kids photos/memories, what are some good services that copy and store those memories?

 

[Xenomorph]

Don’t pay for a storage service. You’ll be tied to that monthly/yearly fee for the rest of your life. Ask the millions of folks who got suckered into using Google photos for free and now are about to get hit with a subscription service. They’re already addicted and most will just pony up.

Two options...

1. If you’re computer savvy or even just a good DIY’er build yourself and a family member an Unraid server. Look up Spaceinvader One on YouTube and follow his tutorials. It might seem like black magic voodoo at first but keep studying and it’ll make sense.

Store your photos locally on your server and back them up off site to the family member’s server. They can do the same with yours. It’s completely free after the cost of your parts and a cheap Unraid license. You can expand as you need more storage.

2. You and a family member just buy a Synology NAS. It’ll cost a little more than building it yourself but it’ll do exactly what you want and like Unraid it has a huge user community that will answer questions.

And while I’ve said use a family member for off-site storage obviously you can just build 2 and put one somewhere other than your house. I run a 36 TB server in my house and built a cheaper 12 TB server that sits in a corner of my office that’s used for nothing but personal photo and important document backup through NextCloud.

All in I’ve got less than $1,500 invested in both servers and operating them however I want is completely free other than a little electricity.

 

[aTotal360]

No offense, but I'd rather get suckered into paying a couple bucks a month for eternity than do that.

 

[Xenomorph]

Y'all is crazy.

 

[dawgman42]

If you have photos, old VHS, reel, or other analog sources of family memories, you can of course buy equipment and storage to "convert" them to digital yourself. If you have the time, it's perfectly fine to run scanners, video converters, etc., to store locally or even online if you want. I used to do this, but the sheer volume of what I had made me almost lock up and stop doing it.

Back in December, I took all my videos from VHS, VHS-C, and miniDV sources to a local shop and had them convert everything for me. I gave them new, empty 512GB and 256GB flash drives, and they were still able to fit about 75 tapes onto a single 512GB stick with excellent quality (low or no compression). I paid about $750 to do it, but it was worth every stinking penny. I've since copied the files onto my computer's internal backup hard drive, onto two external hard drives that are only plugged in when I need them, and to my Google Drive account (I've been paying for expanded storage for 8 years, so no biggie for me) where I can share them privately via YouTube with the family. I'm also about to put the files along with all my digital photos that are also backed up on multiple sources in a safety deposit box, since I want true off-site storage. You really can't appreciate the piece of mind I have getting decades of old tapes converted to an easily playable, sharable, and transferable format. I don't have to worry about my old VCR having drive head issues, or if I can find a Firewire card to put in my computer and that works with Windows 10; issues of the past. It's also been great to seamlessly stream the videos around the house on any TV, phone, or computer and show my kids and family some old memories on the fly.

 

[jethreauxdawg]

Portable hard drive

Forgive me if I’m calling it the wrong thing, but we have a portable hard drive we load all our stuff onto every so often and keep it in our “fireproof” safe. We also keep a duplicate at a family member’s house. They are fairly cheap, but don’t buy the cheap one on Amazon. It’s likely a piece of crap that will crash and lose all your stuff. Sorry that happened to your dad’s house. That’s a bummer.

 

[johnson86-1]

Don’t pay for a storage service. You’ll be tied to that monthly/yearly fee for the rest of your life. Ask the millions of folks who got suckered into using Google photos for free and now are about to get hit with a subscription service. They’re already addicted and most will just pony up.

Two options...

1. If you’re computer savvy or even just a good DIY’er build yourself and a family member an Unraid server. Look up Spaceinvader One on YouTube and follow his tutorials. It might seem like black magic voodoo at first but keep studying and it’ll make sense.

Store your photos locally on your server and back them up off site to the family member’s server. They can do the same with yours. It’s completely free after the cost of your parts and a cheap Unraid license. You can expand as you need more storage.

2. You and a family member just buy a Synology NAS. It’ll cost a little more than building it yourself but it’ll do exactly what you want and like Unraid it has a huge user community that will answer questions.

And while I’ve said use a family member for off-site storage obviously you can just build 2 and put one somewhere other than your house. I run a 36 TB server in my house and built a cheaper 12 TB server that sits in a corner of my office that’s used for nothing but personal photo and important document backup through NextCloud.

All in I’ve got less than $1,500 invested in both servers and operating them however I want is completely free other than a little electricity.

4% of $1500 is $60. SO you can pay for $60 a year of storage, and go up with inflation, almost certainly for two decades and potentially forever. You won't have the control and there's no guarantee storage costs won't go up faster than inflation but I wouldn't go spend $1500 to avoid $5 a month of storage costs.

 

[Xenomorph]

But then how would I run Sonarr and Radarr to feed my Plex?

 

[Xenomorph]

Don't buy an external HD less than 6 TB. It will likely be SMR and the read/write times will be ungodly slow as it reaches capacity. The 8 TB's and up drives are assured to be CMR and don't use that shingle storage system.

Western Digital got caught selling SMR drives as enterprise and it caused a ruckus a few months back.

 

[Jeffreauxdawg]

Home fire suppression system $1.35/SF x 2500 SF = $3375

40 gun fireproof/waterproof safe = $900

Not having to scan 13,000 photos including some from MeMaw Johnson's confirmation in 37' and trying to figure what the 17 Xenomorph was talking about to store them.... Priceless.

 

[HomeBoyDawg]

I use iMemories (imemories.com) and pay $5.99/month. Unfortunately, I have no idea how it compares to other such services but it meets my needs.

 

[kired]

Not having to scan 13,000 photos including some from MeMaw Johnson's confirmation in 37' and trying to figure what the 17 Xenomorph was talking about to store them.... Priceless.

Last time I was going through this process, I decided to say 17 it. We've gotten so overloaded with pictures and video - but what's it good for? My parents have videos from when I was a kid, and maybe they watch them??? (not that I'm aware of) But I know I sure as hell have not watched a home video from my childhood in 20+ years. I've got thousands of pictures of my kids, but why do I need 95% of them?

That's when I decided I'll back this stuff up best I can locally, but I'm going to pick my few hundred favorites and those are the ones I'm going to save for life. I can't imagine there being any point in my life that I'll want to look through 3,000 pictures of my kid when he was 2 years old.