uploading pix to storage

thanks Rob
I have had many discs fail, cds, DVDs and Blurays. while happily parked in there cases and never abused. yes thumb drives have failed also.
in a bouncing RV on WA roads that are like railroad ties....

http://www.virginmobileusa.com/mobile-broadband-plans/broadband-2-go/overview/
DATA WITH YOU, WHENEVER.
Take 4G data on the go. Sprint® 4G LTE Network. No Contract.
$25 a month means 1.5GB
but what does that mean?
I would like internet of course but if I use this to upload GBs of pictures....
will this be enough?
thanks, experts

Keep in mind if choosing offline storage, there are 3 main types: Optical, Mechanical and Flash
- Flash ie a thumb drive or SSD has a very short life (about 1000 writes but depends on quality/brand). The advantage is they are very fast, but I would strongly recommend against them for long term storage or heavy use unless you have a good 2nd copy. Don't expect a heavily used flash drive to last more than a couple of years. I have had failures at work around 1:100 range in the first year.
- Mechanical hard drives have a long history of being reliable, and it is not uncommon for drives to last 7-10 years of regular use. Portable hard drives like some of the models above are a good middle of the road storage. I have had failures around 1:10000 range in the first year.
- Optical storage like CD, DVD and Blueray have been tested to have real world shelf life measured in decades. They are slower and smaller but ideal for very long term storage. I have never in my life seen an optical disk fail if it tested fine after being burned except when scratched by the user.
Just remember if you are using it as a backup solution:
Two copies are one
and one copy is none

Only about 10X faster. AHA!

apps - are they just for tablets and phones? I still use the old laptop.
free reliable encrypter?
thanks guys

Just note that thumb(flash) drives may use less reliable memory. Manufacturers generally reserve their best for SSD, and the remaining for flash drives. Plus, always keep two copies of your photos and don't rely on any one source to store them, such as local drive+cloud storage or DVD/Bluray.

If you're concerned about photo ownership issues for online photo storage, than use cloud based file storage instead. Such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft One Drive, and encrypt them before upload. Therefore, they look just like a file on the cloud end, and only photos when decrypted on your end. There are a number of apps that will encrypt/decrypt folders on the fly for cloud storage.

anon125 wrote:

-- snip --
are these dongles? that you stick into the USB port for AT&T and virgin any faster than RVpark wifi?

Only about 10X faster.

thanks all.
SSDs are too pricey so far and the old disc drive type with moving parts is now iffy. I am sure, like me you have used them in the past with no problems.
I have an account with 50GB available.
also 256gb thumb drives are worth looking at now the prices have fallen.
are these dongles? that you stick into the USB port for AT&T and virgin any faster than RVpark wifi?

If I could add to the OP's question...

Which sites do NOT lay claim to your photos or result in sharing more than you want? Ie. You want to share a few pics and the whole folder is shared.

Since you have no interest in sharing these photos, get a portable 2 terabyte hard drive like this one and you can store or backup about all you want there and not have to use WiFi at all. That 2 terabyte drive will hold 400,000 of your 5MB pictures!

There are 2 ways of doing this, and the method will make a BIG difference.
One option is to use something like Onedrive, GoogleDrive, Dropbox or Box. In this scenario the photos will go up in their original size and as the above posts pointed out, it will take huge amounts of space (and extra space costs $$$), would be slow and likely unpractical for really large quantities. This is a better option for backing up the originals. Option 2 is to use a photo sharing service like Flickr (even Facebook does this). When you upload to most of these services, regardless of the original file size, they will resize the image to a predefined size, usually much much smaller than the original as for online viewing you do not need a massive gazillion megapixel image. This is a better option for sharing with friends/family.

If you are just trying to have a backup, I would opt for hitting a Bestbuy and getting a 1TB WD Passport portable Hard Drive for around $100 to copy them to, than you have all the space you could possibly need and no internet speed/ file size limitations.