Online digital photo safe storage/back up

What's the best free storage for safely storing digital photos? Not linked to your own computer but somewhere you can safely download all your photographs and access from any computer.

Is Picasa good or is it linked to the pc you download it on?

I don't have any Apple products so can I use icloud and is that any good for storing photos?

Picasa is a web-based photo storage site so can be accessed from anywhere as long as you can access your PC from wherever you are.

I use it to store all my photos, both those I have taken and those sent to me, and if I want to post them on to someone via email or onto Dogsey, it is easy enough to do.

As I have two external back-up drives, one of which backs up everything automatically at 12 noon each day, the other I manually back up maybe every two or three days, I have never had any problem with Picasa.

Any special photos that I do not want to lose in the unlikely event of my hard drive packing up plus both external hard drives, I save on Dropbox.

I have no idea about iCloud, sorry.

How about dropbox?

I also store my good shots on my web gallery and on external drives - sadly I've had to experience broken external drives and data loss in the past however.

I hate dropbox - I sometimes have to use it for my job.

I've used Picasa Web Albums for many years now.

It doesn't seem to be so well integrated with Picasa3 as it used to be but you don't have to use both anyway.

I'd say Picasa. Easy to get around and my phone uploads straight to it (but that's probly coz it's a google android phone and Picasa is Google)

My only whinge about Picasa Web Albums is you cannot create sub albums inside another. End up with dozens of albums!

Thanks - you can see I'm not very good at this.

So if I use Picassa, it doesn't matter if my pc dies - I can still get my photos from another pc? So they are safe?

As Picasa is a part of Google it is web-based, so as long as you are able to get into your PC account via another computer, you will be able to find them.

I do not use Picasa Web Albums - all my photos are just stored on Picasa and pulled out and posted as and when I want.

But Linda, if you do not have a back up external hard drive you really should think about getting one. My main external hard drive backs up everything I want backed up every day, and that includes Picasa, and the "pocket" external hard drive I back up manually. Belt, braces, suspenders, the lot.

Thanks Malka, Picasa sounds just what I was thinking about. I have a Google account so I should be able to access my photos even if my pc dies and presumably copy them onto any new pc from Picassa.

I have two external hard drives! A big one and a smaller, portable one. I learned the hard way to back up photos, unfortunately. I lost some baby photos of Carys and they couldn't be recovered. I was gutted!

Thank you.

Linda, I do not know what back-up program you use but I use Cobian Backup 11 Gravity. It is a free back up system and recommended and installed by Effie when building my computers. I think it was Cobian 9 when he first installed it.

Anyhow, the main [not very big] external hard drive automatically backs up what he has set it to to, which is what I want, every day at noon. The "pocket" external hard drive is also set to back up whatever I want, but that I back up manually.

And after having had a double disaster some years back when my PC hard drive died and my external HD had a problem [it was actually the case and not the external HD itself] and I did not know enough to check that it was actually backing up although it said it was, and losing eight months of everything, I now have the two external hard drives and check regularly that they are actually backing up when they say they are.

As far as I am concerned, if Effie recommended Cobian Backup, which is free, who am I to argue with him?

Correct. And you choose who can 'see' them. All albums can be private or public or just anyone you give the link to and you can set that for every album.

And I don't use a back up drive having had, used and worked on computers for yonks and yonks. You only need a memory stick if you just want to preserve photos. I made the mistake of putting all mine on disk when I got the latest laptop. I will NEVER now get round to going through them around ten thousand lol! Memory sticks are the way to go. Unless you are hosting a website or have so much stuff you can't fit it on a meaty one.

I don't actually care what else I might lose. I've only had two problems in my life with it DYING and it was recoverable by experts. I only care about my photos lol! All email is web based and so are a lot of my docs kept in google docs. Why take space up on your pc when you can use theirs?

Oh and I now find Picasa (not picasaweb) a bit of a pain because it is always updating ALL images (and I store zillions for my job) and is not now smoothly integrated with web albums. The web albums I find invaluable.