To loose everything...

[neil_ross]

depending on money what about a solid state hard drive? pretty much the same as a CF card, no moving parts to break and much more reliable.

[neil_ross]

alternatively you could just rent some server space, get an ftp program, zip up your files and put them on the server. it would take a fairly long time to do but if your happy to leave your laptop on for 50 hours or so it should be fine!

[OldBoy]

Losts of Web hosting sites do backups for less that £2 a month. If you use a internet Cafe which has fiber-optics links should be able to store them all very quickly.

Just thought about Filckr. If you buy a years subscription for a Pro account, at $25 per year, you can upload as much as you want - no limit - could be your best option as you can restrict who can see your photos.

[KeithT]

SmugMug have better looking sites on offer. A bit dearer than a Flickr pro account, but with the Smugmug pro site
you can upload unlimited images at 24mb per image. The basic website has a decent 12mb per image unlimited storage for around $40 a year. I'm considering joining up myself.

See here: http://www.smugmug.com/photos/photo-sharing-features/

As for home storage, I do pretty much the same as Chris, and store stuff I am passionate about on optical media as well as a couple of 500 gig external hd's. However I think that SSD is definitely the way to go in the future. As solid state storage capacity increases and the cost of cards tumble, I think the old CD/DVD will be seen as 'old fashioned' and will, like the all the other media storage devices of the past, be seen to have had its day. When SSD reaches at least 500 gig per card. I will definitely go that route myself.

[OldBoy]

Originally Posted by KeithT

SmugMug have better looking sites on offer. A bit dearer than a Flickr pro account, but with the Smugmug pro site
you can upload unlimited images at 24mb per image. The basic website has a decent 12mb per image unlimited storage for around $40 a year. I'm considering joining up myself.

See here: http://www.smugmug.com/photos/photo-sharing-features/

As for home storage, I do pretty much the same as Chris, and store stuff I am passionate about on optical media as well as a couple of 500 gig external hd's. However I think that SSD is definitely the way to go in the future. As solid state storage capacity increases and the cost of cards tumble, I think the old CD/DVD will be seen as 'old fashioned' and will, like the all the other media storage devices of the past, be seen to have had its day. When SSD reaches at least 500 gig per card. I will definitely go that route myself.

In his case he is moving to another country and is concerned about harddisks been damaged, which is why I suggested Flickr's pro account.

Just seen the latest SSD drive at 512gb for only £1,200.

[KeithT]

Originally Posted by OldBoy

In his case he is moving to another country and is concerned about harddisks been damaged, which is why I suggested Flickr's pro account.

Just seen the latest SSD drive at 512gb for only £1,200.

A whopping price that, OldBoy! But it runs true of all new stuff that comes onto the market. I still feel the pain of paying £70 for a 1 gig CF card not so many years ago. You can get a Sandisk 16 gig extreme card for that price these days. Give it three or four years and SSD harddrives will be the norm at sensible prices, and they will sell like hotcakes.

EDIT. With smugMug, like Flickr pro, you can retrieve your high res images, so a good place to archive if your are worried about hdd crashes I suppose.

[OldBoy]

Originally Posted by KeithT

A whopping price that, OldBoy! But it runs true of all new stuff that comes onto the market. I still feel the pain of paying £70 for a 1 gig CF card not so many years ago. You can get a Sandisk 16 gig extreme card for that price these days. Give it three or four years and SSD harddrives will be the norm at sensible prices, and they will sell like hotcakes.

I remember paying almost £200 for two 512mm CF cards.