Photo/document storage

jen_fpb

I know that the cheapest option might not be best.

I have photos on my phone and photos/documents on my laptop (including 172GB of photos). 

Wanting to back up so chances if losing are slimmer. I'm thinking an external hard drive and some cloud/online storage. 

What do people recommend and why? 

Neil_Jones

Set up Google Backup if your phone is Android and backing up your phone content will take care of itself:

https://support.google.com/android/answer/2819582?hl=en-GB

If its iOS there is a similar option for iCloud.

With regards to the laptop, easiest solution is just get the biggest external drive you can afford.

oldernonethewiser

As well as the Cloud of whatever flavour you could consider a NAS for backing up everything on your laptop.

Grey_Critic

***(including 172GB of photos)***

That is a lot of photos - do you actually want to save them all? I jave spent time going through my pictures from my 35mm days and dumped most and scanned what I wanted to keep. I then started on my digital stuff and once again got rid of a lot.

I recently downloaded over 500 from my mates mobile. Once again there were a lot that were no longer of interest or needed.

We all seem to download and forget

jen_fpb

172gb of photos is from digital. Camera pre mobile phone. I did a lot of travelling so lots of photos from there. 

facade

Get a couple of portable hard drives and copy everything onto them. Then keep one in your desk at work, or at a relatives house, and the other in your little firesafe*.

If you are worried that someone can look at them, get a my passport, which has hardware encryption, for the same sort of price.

As Grey_Critic says, you likely will never look at them again anyway, but it is nice to know you could find a photo if you needed to.

*What do you mean, you don't have one?  If your house burns down and destroys your bank cards, laptop, mobile, passport and birth certificate, you become a non-person as you lack any physical proof that can be used to access bank accounts or collect cards in person, you can't get new cards posted out as couriers/Post office won't deliver to a burnt out house (I doubt if you can set up a mail redirect either without physical ID if you have no house)

GrubbyGirl_2

If you have an amazon prime account you can store them all on prime photos for free