Photobucket Officially Sucks!

[Rastus]

Well heck, this was longer ago than I thought.  2010
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817707159
Link above is what I bought for an enclosure...newer stuff is better.  This one is only USB 2.0

Link below is what I have for a router...got it early 2015 because it has USB 3.0.  I still have not upgraded the enclosure though.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320218

I actually have two 500 GB drives in the enclosure and I only have about 250 GB stored (each drive has 250 GB on it).  I bought those two drives locally for like $70 each 3 years ago...I guess.  Shoot, I did not remember this enclosure being 7 years old.  The first drives I had in it were around 250 GB...they are in the safe and then I upgraded to the 500 GB.  So, I have all the data I generated on the first drives up to around 2014 when I took them out of service and then everything on those plus since then on the 500 GB drives I have now.

I unplug the drive enclosure and put it in the safe when I go on vacation in case of a fire.  You don't have that worry if you store on the cloud but Big Brother (which includes Google, Microsoft and others along with the US Government, hackers, Russians, Chinese, etc.) will find a way to see what you got or to mine data from it if they like.  Not so easy when the data is not accessible 98% of the time because the backup is powered down with a hard switch.....I don't care how good a hacker you are you can't make the wires come alive and flip that switch.

I'll look around and let you know what looks good.  Being 7 years old it's time to upgrade the enclosure again I think.  You can buy external hard drives...but they were more expensive up to a year or two ago and especially so if they had two drives with one mirroring or backing up the other.

Perhaps we have a network guru here who can help us?

[Rastus]

Explanation of the varirous types of back up types...Raid 0, 1, etc.  I want high quality and I want both drives to mirror one another automatically so if one fails I plug another in and copy it....for RAID 1 both have to be the same size and type.  So maybe you go with a different RAID level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_1

I like RAID 1.  This unit does RAID 1 plus other RAID levels:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817198063&ignorebbr=1&cm_re=enclosure-_-17-198-063-_-Product
$75 after rebate and has USB 3.0 and 2 bays for RAID 1 and 3.5" drives with SATA 1, 2 or 3 and up to 8 TB per drive. 

HOWEVER, this one does not allow the drives to spin down when not in use.  They keep turning.  That's not a big deal for me since I turn it on and off to back up to keep the hackers and ransomeware guys at bay.  When my computer is running fine and I've done a virus check I'll backup....then if they get me they can kiss my a$$ I have ALL of my data since the last backup.  And again, I have the USB attached to my router so that we can backup the wife's laptop, both of my son's college laptop work remotely and I backup from my desktop corded to the router and then the backup enclosure drives.

500 GB for $40 each:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149380&ignorebbr=1

1 TB drive for $50 each:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236339&ignorebbr=1

2TB drive for $68 each:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178993&ignorebbr=1

3 TB for $90 each:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178994&ignorebbr=1

4TB for $114 each:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822179009&ignorebbr=1

8 TB for $230 each:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178748&ignorebbr=1.

I have to do some additional checking to really know if this is compatible but so far it looks good.  So it's looking like $75 for the enclosure (after rebate) that supports multiple levels of RAID.  Then pick two hard drives...I will probably go with 2 TB since my wife got a new camera last month.  But then again...I have a lot of room left on the 500 GB I have.

[Rastus]

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAA3N4BU7302&cm_re=ENCLOSURES-_-9SIAA3N4BU7302-_-Product

This unit, though more expensive, appears to spin down when not in use.  So if you like to keep it on all the time this is probably better....may not spin down for a Mac unless you "manually eject" it.

Also is USB 3.1 and faster....

[Rastus]

Bill, make a decision about storage yet?

[billt]

Bill, make a decision about storage yet?

I'm using Imgur now. I've got most all of my photos transferred to them from Photobucket. I try to do a few every morning early. There is less traffic then, and Photobucket doesn't lock up so much. Once I get them off Photobucket, and into "My Pictures", it's a breeze to upload them to Imgur. They also have nice, easy to use editing and resizing. A dream compared to that disaster Photobucket.

[Sponsor]

[Rastus]

I started an account on Imur too.  I like you can keep high quality.  It's the sort of thing I'll only use for posting on the board...my primary backup is still my home RAID hooked up to the router.  I posted a pic on Tom's handgun thread.  I think it loads slow because the pic is too large...next time I'll cut back on the resolution.

[alfsauve]

My wife does a big production book fair every year for her library.  I'm talking BIG. Gross sales over 4 days are around $35,000.  Short story long, I take many pictures as does one of her assistants.  Her assistant insists on using Shutterfly.   I have a free account on Shutterfly just so I'm able to download the assistant's pictures.  Haven't been there in a while but tonight I remembered why I don't like it.   SLOW-W-W--W--W.

I transferred 300 pictures from Cathy's account to mine.  That was completed 1/2 hour ago, but Shutterfly won't let me view these picture, much less start downloading them yet.  Shutterfly is "updating" my new photos and "preparing a new photo experience."   PLEASE, just let me have the photos the way they were originally uploaded.   Yes, Smugmug costs, but I have instant access to the pictures I upload.  And downloading can be done directly from my site without visitors having a Smugmug account.

[UPDATE:  9am Friday]
Sometime around 3 or 4 this morning Shutterfly finally let me see the photos.   I then requested a download and after a few minutes they sent me an email with a link to download a .ZIP file.   I have all the pictures on my computer, finally, but that was painful.

[tombogan03884]

But they are holding all your photo's hostage.
 

[billt]

But they are holding all your photo's hostage.

That's exactly what Photobucket is doing. But they're F'ing up royally doing it. The damn site is so slow, no one would be stupid enough to pay for it. If it ran like greased lightning, people who have a lot of photos stored there would pony up a few bucks a month to be able to keep them posted at third party sites. But not the way it's been running for the last year.

[alfsauve]

I use Photobucket only for those odd postings on "for sale" sites and forums.  Free and I don't care about their features or offerings.

Smugmug provides me with:

a)  A cloud based backup to all my pictures.   Hackers can encrypt my computer so I can't use it, but my photos will still be available to me.   I'll just buy a new computer. 

b)  A web site where friends and family can view all the pictures.

c)  If I want to start selling pictures they provide the infrastructure to EASILY do so.