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Post by spellcaster on Dec 12, 2021 18:31:47 GMT
The topic is photo-hosting, and I have a story to tell. I'm sure there are people who have had strong feelings about photo-hosting sites that started out as free service and then suddenly announced that people would need to pay exorbitant fees to maintain the service, such as Photobucket......We all know how that worked out for the company which lost huge numbers of users, and despite pulling in their horns and reducing the prices, found their customer base reduced to a small percentage of their previous business model.
In the case of Photobucket, I used the service for several years, using it for all my photo cloud-storage and as a medium to link all of my photos of guitar building and guitar projects and acquisitions in about a dozen guitar forums on the internet. When they changed their policy, I suddenly found that hundreds of the photos I'd linked to my Photobucket account suddenly disappeared from my thousands of online forum posts. The only small consolation was that by temporarily subscribing to their bend-you-over pricing, I was able to download all my photos and look for an alternate means of storage. What's happened now is worse.....A lot worse, I think. When I left Photobucket and looked for alternate cloud storage, I chose VGY. It worked out well for about three years. About a month ago, I suddenly found that more than half of my photos suddenly didn't seem to be accessible. I made several email inquiries before I finally got an answer from them....... "Images not viewed after 1 year are automatically deleted. Our service is meant to be used for images that will frequently be viewed. Our service is not considered a backup option." I was horrified. I'd assumed that cloud storage would be a reliable way of storing my pictures. I'd seen people rely on storing pictures in their computer, or in outboard hard-drives, and then lose them when the electronic storage medium failed and the contents were unrecoverable. I assumed that cloud storage was more trustworthy, so that I wouldn't be depending on my personal computer to maintain my photos. This hasn't turned out to be that case. At this point, I've lost irreplaceable photos of deceased family members and friends, the pictures of special occasions I treasured and wanted to remember, pictures of instruments I had owned that were now gone, and step-by-step photographs of my guitar-building jobs taken over almost two decades. The loss is incalculable and there's absolutely no way to every recover what I've lost. I know I'm not the first person to ever lose all their photographic treasures.....If your house burns down, you just have to accept it as an act of God. It's quite another thing to have someone arbitrarily decide to throw away the things that are irreplaceable and beyond any price in value. It would have been so easy for VGY to send an email to a customer and give them the opportunity to download and copy content onto an alternate means of storage. I feel angry beyond any description. I've lost things that I can never get back.....Pictures of my deceased parents and other family and friends are gone forever. I hope that relating my story may help other people to avoid the pain I'm feeling. You can't depend on photo-hosting cloud storage just as you can't rely on a computer hard drive to permanently store any photograph that holds real value to you. All you can do is employ multiple backup systems if you want to permanently keep anything digital in nature. And one more piece of advice......Avoid VGY.me photo-storage at all costs. They can't be trusted. |
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Post by laristotle on Dec 12, 2021 19:20:38 GMT
Time to go old school? Print them out and store in a photo album. Scan and post when required. ![]()  |
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Post by infant on Dec 12, 2021 20:48:02 GMT
I keep mine on both a portable HD as well as a USB thumb drive. That way if I lose one, I still have the other. The ones on my phone get copied to my tablet.
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Post by Die Bullen on Dec 12, 2021 21:27:36 GMT
Short term, I'd call the company and see if the files can be recovered. I never give up with a first failed attempt and the secret is get someone on the phone.
Long term, you know now that someone else's storage facilities are simply not good enough and carry inherent risks. As I told you with the windows 7 to 10 issue, get an external HD or SSD for truly important storage. Leave it unplugged from the machine except when you are putting new files on it.
Can you recover any files from local devices/ memory cards? They had to have been stored on something at some point
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Post by Bill h on Dec 13, 2021 2:23:28 GMT
I was a photobucket guy, same thing happened to me, one day all my posted photos disappeared etc....... Since then I just keep all my important photos on my phone and I have a compression app that allows me to post them on sites like this even though the pic quality suffers.
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Post by spellcaster on Dec 13, 2021 3:19:54 GMT
I was a photobucket guy, same thing happened to me, one day all my posted photos disappeared etc....... Since then I just keep all my important photos on my phone and I have a compression app that allows me to post them on sites like this even though the pic quality suffers. What happens if your phone fails? |
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Post by Bill h on Dec 13, 2021 3:32:18 GMT
I was a photobucket guy, same thing happened to me, one day all my posted photos disappeared etc....... Since then I just keep all my important photos on my phone and I have a compression app that allows me to post them on sites like this even though the pic quality suffers. What happens if your phone fails? Good question, I’m not sure if they could be recovered if that happens. That said, i should stick them on a thumb drive which is easy enough. |
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Post by spellcaster on Dec 13, 2021 3:48:26 GMT
What happens if your phone fails? Good question, I’m not sure if they could be recovered if that happens. That said, i should stick them on a thumb drive which is easy enough. I've seen multiple inquiries on Facebook Marketplace from people looking for someone who could recover their data from a broken smart phone. I guess that was one of the main paints in my initial post.....You really need to have redundant storage of your content, so if there's a catastrophic failure in your primary storage medium, there's a backup to recover. I didn't realize before that cloud storage wasn't reliable, so I should have been using a backup as well. Based on what I've heard about the quesionable reliability of thumb-drives, I suspect that an outboard hard drive is probably the best way to go. |
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Post by spellcaster on Dec 13, 2021 3:56:38 GMT
I just automatically assumed that cloud storage was the smart choice...ie: If your house burns down, or your phone is lost or goes for a swim, or your computer's internal drive fails, your downloads are safe because they're removed from the premises, but I've learned the hard way that nothing is dependable enough to be your only security.
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Post by Bill h on Dec 13, 2021 5:16:16 GMT
Good question, I’m not sure if they could be recovered if that happens. That said, i should stick them on a thumb drive which is easy enough. I've seen multiple inquiries on Facebook Marketplace from people looking for someone who could recover their data from a broken smart phone. I guess that was one of the main paints in my initial post.....You really need to have redundant storage of your content, so if there's a catastrophic failure in your primary storage medium, there's a backup to recover. I didn't realize before that cloud storage wasn't reliable, so I should have been using a backup as well. Based on what I've heard about the quesionable reliability of thumb-drives, I suspect that an outboard hard drive is probably the best way to go. From what I’ve read, thumb drives do have a life span, typically around 10 years. I know the technology is improving and info on that subject is really all over the place. I read in more then one place that thumb drives degrade in that amount of time so I tend to believe it. I’d be interested in what you know on that topic. I guess the only way to defeat that issue is to go to a new drive every few years. I’m really not very knowledgeable on this stuff anyhow, especially the cloud and how it works. |
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Post by spellcaster on Dec 13, 2021 5:38:33 GMT
I've seen multiple inquiries on Facebook Marketplace from people looking for someone who could recover their data from a broken smart phone. I guess that was one of the main paints in my initial post.....You really need to have redundant storage of your content, so if there's a catastrophic failure in your primary storage medium, there's a backup to recover. I didn't realize before that cloud storage wasn't reliable, so I should have been using a backup as well. Based on what I've heard about the quesionable reliability of thumb-drives, I suspect that an outboard hard drive is probably the best way to go. From what I’ve read, thumb drives do have a life span, typically around 10 years. I know the technology is improving and info on that subject is really all over the place. I read in more then one place that thumb drives degrade in that amount of time so I tend to believe it. I’d be interested in what you know on that topic. I guess the only way to defeat that issue is to go to a new drive every few years. I’m really not very knowledgeable on this stuff anyhow, especially the cloud and how it works. I'm by no means an expert. When I was recently looking into backup storage as part of a Windows 7 to 10 upgrade, I was going to use a thumb drive, but Lowell (dB) advised me to spend the extra dough for a real outboard hard drive. I think he's more likely to have good insights into the difference. From what I've heard, there's a difference in reliability, plus I've heard that thumb drives can be notoriously slow if you're trying to access one item, and hard drives are much quicker. |
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Post by Die Bullen on Dec 13, 2021 14:37:34 GMT
From what I’ve read, thumb drives do have a life span, typically around 10 years. I know the technology is improving and info on that subject is really all over the place. I read in more then one place that thumb drives degrade in that amount of time so I tend to believe it. I’d be interested in what you know on that topic. I guess the only way to defeat that issue is to go to a new drive every few years. I’m really not very knowledgeable on this stuff anyhow, especially the cloud and how it works. I'm by no means an expert. When I was recently looking into backup storage as part of a Windows 7 to 10 upgrade, I was going to use a thumb drive, but Lowell (dB) advised me to spend the extra dough for a real outboard hard drive. I think he's more likely to have good insights into the difference. From what I've heard, there's a difference in reliability, plus I've heard that thumb drives can be notoriously slow if you're trying to access one item, and hard drives are much quicker. Trust me guys, an external HD/ SSD is absolutely the way to go. Yes, it will set you back $100 or so (depending on size of course) but those things are specifically designed for long term data storage use. Like I said just don't leave them plugged into the computer. You can't hack a drive that isn't connected. So plug in and archive your new important files and then eject the drive and disconnect it when you are done. |
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Post by johnreardon on Dec 13, 2021 18:09:46 GMT
I'm by no means an expert. When I was recently looking into backup storage as part of a Windows 7 to 10 upgrade, I was going to use a thumb drive, but Lowell (dB) advised me to spend the extra dough for a real outboard hard drive. I think he's more likely to have good insights into the difference. From what I've heard, there's a difference in reliability, plus I've heard that thumb drives can be notoriously slow if you're trying to access one item, and hard drives are much quicker. Trust me guys, an external HD/ SSD is absolutely the way to go. Yes, it will set you back $100 or so (depending on size of course) but those things are specifically designed for long term data storage use. Like I said just don't leave them plugged into the computer. You can't hack a drive that isn't connected. So plug in and archive your new important files and then eject the drive and disconnect it when you are done. Fully agree. I have one of the MyPassport 2TB HD, which I leave off the system when not using. Also have a powered 500MB HD. As a final over the top backup, I copy all my essential files to my MacBook |
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Post by allthumbs56 on Dec 13, 2021 20:30:29 GMT
I'm by no means an expert. When I was recently looking into backup storage as part of a Windows 7 to 10 upgrade, I was going to use a thumb drive, but Lowell (dB) advised me to spend the extra dough for a real outboard hard drive. I think he's more likely to have good insights into the difference. From what I've heard, there's a difference in reliability, plus I've heard that thumb drives can be notoriously slow if you're trying to access one item, and hard drives are much quicker. Trust me guys, an external HD/ SSD is absolutely the way to go. Yes, it will set you back $100 or so (depending on size of course) but those things are specifically designed for long term data storage use. Like I said just don't leave them plugged into the computer. You can't hack a drive that isn't connected. So plug in and archive your new important files and then eject the drive and disconnect it when you are done. We have a winner! Never, ever trust a stranger with things important to you. Always have a copy too. I am horrified that people are trusting their data and their applications to the "Cloud". All of my data and applications are on my own computer and I do a backup at least once a month. I own the software I use - I refuse to rent it. I'm an old-school IT guy - don't trust a stranger and don't ever forget the "I agree to these terms" box you check off on everything you install. |
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Post by zontar on Dec 19, 2021 1:06:56 GMT
I use vey to post them--I haven't had any deleted, unless I deleted them.
I have them backed up as well.
But different people prefer different methods.
And the Cloud is just somebody else's computer.
I like to have access to my photos, etc even if I have no wifi or internet connection of some sort.
I don't store my music that way
If the link is down--I can still listen when I choose--unless the power's out.
And in that case it's the music you or someone there with you plays.
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