Cloud v. external hard drive for PC backups

I've been a good girl and Father Christmas brought me a new Acer PC running Windows 8.1.

I now need to start looking at organising backups for all my family history files & photos + all my digital photos.

With the PC came access to Windows Skydrive & Acer Cloud - neither of which I can make head nor tail of.

Our internet is via BT, so looked at BT Cloud, and although I've installed the app, I can't get into it !

Or should I just carry on backing up to an external hard drive using Karen's Replicator as I've been doing with my Dell PC.

Comments and suggestions please.

I got a very nice "My passport" hard drive for Christmas.

I have transferred all my photos to it freeing space on the computer. The "My passport" is right next to my computer so if I need a photo, I just plug the hard drive into the computer.

I'm a bit old fashioned and like to have my own backups - you never know with the cloud.

But if you do have external drives, then you should take them off site - in a garage or a friends house.

And you should have 2 of them and rotate them as one day they will die.

One of my remote hard drives did die. This was a few years ago.

I'm big on backing up my important files on hard drive or memory stick, (I do love the memory stick, keep several around at all times). Not that a cloud is a bad idea, but, as Julie mentioned, all hardware items go belly up sometime, including cloud servers, so IMHO the more places you have files saved the better. Learned this lesson a few too many times the hard way...

Best wishes for many sales to all,

I carve all my important data and images into stone tablets.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gbsbks2010

I got a very nice "My passport" hard drive for Christmas.

I have transferred all my photos to it freeing space on the computer. The "My passport" is right next to my computer so if I need a photo, I just plug the hard drive into the computer.

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Think i might I might get one of those as well as the Freecom external drive I have at the moment can be tempremental as well using USB drives. My family history files are already on Cd & on Dropbox as an experiment.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Bit late coming to this thread but as most have said. A local external hard disk or two is very handy. Probably best to go for those with external power (not fed from USB) and 3.5".

Don't leave the cloud though. I haven't used it myself but it may prove handy.

Always try to store files keeping the original size as some uploads may reduce the size and quality and you don't want that. OK if you're aware and have the original backups.

Uploading large amounts of data can be slow but if you do reduce the size of the image and upload them it's a good way to share and generally view. Those friends and family that would like a better copy could always ask you to share your original.

Just as a note, DVD compliant slide shows aren't backups as they too reduce the image to PAL or NTSC DVD size. DVD data is OK.