Best Cloud Storage for iPhoto backup?

I too have been looking for a cloud-based photo manager. It is indeed too bad iPhoto/iCloud can't serve this purpose (yet?). Photo Stream is deceptive in that is lures you into thinking your data is secure in the cloud, when its only there for a 30 day window.

I currently have my photo on RAID 1 NAS, meaning the *two* drives need to fail to loose my data, but off-site backup would be better. That said, I'm unwilling to go through the contortions that Terrence above desbribes.

I've been dabbling with Adobe Revel and so far, so good.

Pros:

+ Unlimited photos, perportedly at full resolution

+ Synching with OS X and iOS devices

Cons:

- Costs money, currently $6 a month

- Limited platform support, if you need Android or Windows (Adobe says its coming)

- Very limited feature set just now, it really needs tagging/search, facial recognization, print ordering, etc.

Anyhow, another one to consider.

Photo Stream is deceptive in that is lures you into thinking your data is secure in the cloud, when its only there for a 30 day window.

You must not have been paying very close attention to all the early hoopla about iCloud nor the Apple iCloud website which includes this description:

1000 of your latest photos. With you all the time.

iCloud manages your Photo Stream efficiently so you don’t run out of storage space on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. If you have Photo Stream enabled on your iOS device, every single photo you take appears in a special Photo Stream album that holds your last 1000 photos. You can delete any photos you don’t want from the Photo Stream.¹ To touch up a photo or keep a favorite shot permanently, simply save it to your Camera Roll. iCloud stores new photos for 30 days, so you have plenty of time to connect your iOS device to Wi-Fi and make sure you always have your most recent shots handy.

The 30 day limit was one of the early features of iCloud/Photo Stream that was discussed indetail in the forums and in other websites like MacWorld and MacInTouch.

Right out of the gate it was clearly stated that there was no online, permanent storage of photos. The oneline storage was more for music and documents from Pages, etc.

PS is certainly not deceptive. This is extremely clear.

1000 of your latest photos. With you all the time.

iCloud manages your Photo Stream efficiently so you don’t run out of storage space on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. If you have Photo Stream enabled on your iOS device, every single photo you take appears in a special Photo Stream album that holds your last 1000 photos. You can delete any photos you don’t want from the Photo Stream.1 To touch up a photo or keep a favorite shot permanently, simply save it to your Camera Roll. iCloud stores new photos for 30 days, so you have plenty of time to connect your iOS device to Wi-Fi and make sure you always have your most recent shots handy.

And in addition you are risking major problems since the iPhoto library must reside on a volume formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) so unless you have a NAS that I've not seen or you have a properly formatted disk image on your NAS you are not meeting this requirement and will have problems

LN

Agreed on "not deceptive"... for the engaged 1% that read past the headlines, research things on MacWorld, and contribute to forums like this one. My opinion only, I still contend for the 99%, Photo Stream can give a false sense of security. Regardless, we can all agree Photo Steam is not suitable for "sticky" for cloud photo management.

@LarryHN, right, my NAS is not Mac OS formatted, but I'm okay with this. I don't care about iPhoto per se, but I do very much care about have a raw archive of JPEGs in some form. Even if iPhoto goes "poof", the raw images would still be intact on the NAS. Sure, I might loose some useful iPhoto metadata, but the truly valuable content would not be lost.

You are absolutely correct and i think that Apple should do something about it because the storage space is way too less if you compare it with what other storage companies are offering. I prefer Dropbox for my iPhone because not only the name is too big but it has certain features that make the service apart from the rest of the competitors. Yes i know that there are a lot of options available in the market and though they are good too. I got a total of 25GB on my Dropbox and it is hard to leave them now 😉 Carbonite is also good but i believe better is to invest on JustCloud because it is cheaper than others (Other than Dropbox).

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Thanks for the Advertising but again, does not in any way deal with the real world issues of formats and massive data transfers.

Why not? Cloud storage has the compatibility to cater such kind of requirements. How much massive data storage do you intend to store?

Perhaps you should read the thread... An iPhoto Library can quckly reach sizes of hundreds of gigabytes, and we regularly see people on here complaining that restoring from such services can take days...

I agree!

I migrated from iPhoto to Google's Picasa for this reason. For hardly any money of Google storage, I can sync my entire photo collection, sorted and categorised using the Picasa Mac app, to the web. Any album can then be shared with friends and family etc. I use a decent 3rd party Picasa app on the phone to view any album at any time, and any can be then synced offline to the phone if desired. I can create albums on the phone and upload direct to Picasa, which then syncs back down to my Mac. It works really well, I can't see any need to go back to iPhoto.

That's backing up your photos online, and that's very important. I use SmugMug for the same job. Others use services lik Flickr and, yes Picasa, from iPhoto too. But that's not backing up your Library - versions, edit history etc etc etc.

Ideally I'd like something that works Like Picassa from Google - I tried using when I switched to Apple and iPhoto but due to the way iPhoto stores phots (badly) ended up with a total mess of photos in Picassa as it can't read the database files that make sense of the disorgansied file structe iPhoto creates.

Then why not use Picasa from Google? But remember that's not backing up your Library either, that's just backing up photos.

And no, there's no mess in how iPhoto stores the Photos at all. The fact that you - ot google, apparently - donn't understand it means just that - you don't understand it. But if you do, then it's not only logical but really very clever.

Here's a hint though: It's about Photos and not Files. You'll always have issues until you grasp that distinction.

Regards

TD

Why not just use a true backup service like Crashplan? Unlimited space, way more secure than the other alternatives listed here and cheap. Plus you can backup more than just your photos.

Correct - Picassa can not access the iPhoto library - just like any photo manager you need to exprot form iPhoto and then use the photos the way the new photo manager suggests

Direct access to the iPhoto library is not supported and is noever a good idea

That is not a problem with iPhoto - it is your problem because you are misusing the iPhoto library - if you use it correctly as supported it is just hunky dory

LN