Need advice on photo storage and hardware updates

[Albert in N]

   Time caught up with me!  Most of my railroad (and family) photos before 2000 are film negatives and print, mostly 120, 110, and 35mm.  Then I went to a common digital camera uploaded onto my Windows 7 laptop with Windows Live Photo Gallery (now obsolete).  My cell phone is used only for phone and text, at my preference, so that is not an option.  I would appreciate any answers to my two questions.  First, can anyone recommend a business that will convert my film negatives or prints to digital CD or thumb drive?  Locally, all the photo shops, drug stores, and even Walmart have closed their brick and morter photo labs.
Second, if I update to a Linux/Google notebook or laptop, does anyone recommend a good inexpensive or free cloud storage? Probably, I will continue to use a digital camera and plan on uploading it into the cloud using a new notebook/lap top.
Here is an example of what I have done in the past with my Fujifilm digital camera uploaded into Windows Live Photo Gallery:

[Pomperaugrr]

I have had very good luck with https://legacybox.com/

They have good deals for new customers.    I have been pleased with the results.

Eric

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Amazon S3 storage is about as cheap as you could want. It'll take some setup but if S3 goes away, so will about 60% of the Internet.

Personally, I'm a huge Dropbox fan. Been using it for years. But I ALSO have all my phone photos (which are really the ones I'd care about preserving) also in Google Photos (because it's the default with Pixel phones). If you're not already in that ecosystem I don't have anything to really recommend it other than being "there".

As for scanning, my friend Rudy does it for about $1 per image. Usually he does it for organizations, but I see no reason he wouldn't do personal photos. https://www.garbelypublishing.com/photos

[Albert in N]

   Thanks for the info, guys.  Ed, I appreciate the link!  This is exactly what I need to convert my negatives to digital.  I will start grouping my negatives for the scanner man.  Also, I will check out getting a notebook and photo storage for future photos.

[tappertrainman]

If you already pay for Amazon Prime, they offer free unlimited cloud photo storage.  You can install the apps on your computer and on your phone for automatic backups.

[peteski]

If you already pay for Amazon Prime, they offer free unlimited cloud photo storage.  You can install the apps on your computer and on your phone for automatic backups.

What happens to the photos if you decide (for whatever reason) to unsubscribe to the Prime service?

[wcfn100]

What happens to the photos if you decide (for whatever reason) to unsubscribe to the Prime service?

You get 180 days to get back under 5GB or photos start getting deleted starting with the newest uploads.

Jason

[DKS]

How many online photo storage entities have we lost (ImageShack), are losing (Flickr), or change their service from "unlimited" to whatever amount they decide, whenever they decide (Google)? Actually, it's hard to find the answer, but it's enough that one should think twice about using online photo storage, which is ironic since "professionals" claim that cloud storage is more reliable than localized backups. Well, if you can't rely on Google, who can you rely on? Honestly?

Me, I'm all for localized backups. Hard drives are so cheap that you can store a terabyte of data for less than $50. Get two and have a redundant copy.

That said, digital is not what most people make it out to be. Digital information is (unfortunately) one of the most fragile forms of documentation known to man.

https://www.quantumrun.com/insight/digital-content-fragility-preserving-data-even-possible-today

Even Google says so:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11410506/Print-out-digital-photos-or-risk-losing-them-Google-boss-warns.html

Nothing on the Internet is forever. Not even the Internet itself.

Meanwhile, books as old as 1,800 years or more are still intact and readable, and with care will likely remain so for many centuries to come, whereas the life expectancy of a typical recordable CD or DVD is no more than 1/100th of that. And while old photos may fade and become damaged over time, they can be restored, often with surprising success, whereas once the data of a digital image is corrupted, it's lost forever.

Some years back, one of the largest data warehouses on the planet reported that digital information is being lost faster than it can be preserved. Not to mention that new data is being accumulated at a geometrically increasing rate.

So, choose your image storage method with care.

[Albert in N]

   My rugged laptop was updated to a solid state hard drive a couple of years ago by Geek Squad. Windows 7 with Windows Live Photo Gallery and Word, Excel etc. still works very well with no fees but for antivirus protection.  I also have the original mechanical hard drive stored.  (It still worked after Geek Squad removed the virus that jammed it).  I have backed up photos with thumb drives.  My best film/negative photos were taken in the 1970s and early 1980s when there was a variety of locomotives, cabooses, and railroads running shorter trains more frequently.  There were even Class 1 branch lines.  Nowadays, mergers have taken their toll, there are far fewer locomotive varieties, and no manned cabooses are in common use.  I take far fewer railroad photos.  My plan is using a commercial train photo scanner business to enable me to share some of these film photos, plus making them more convenient for me to view.  Sure, I will get a notebook but still use my old hard drive laptop.  After all, this old Lenovo laptop may outlast me.

[peteski]

While Solid State drives are much faster than the spinning disk drives, in many instances they have shorter life expectancy.  There is a limited number of write operations that Flash Memory is capable off.  I work in the storage industry and I would not trust a SSD drive for archival storage.

And as DKS mentioned, it is *EXTREMELY IMPORTANT* to have multiple (at least 2) backup copies of the data which you consider important and worth keeping.  At least one preferably isolated (disconnected) from your computer (after you do the backup), and even better it it was offsite (like at work, or at you in-laws).     Storage devices are so cheap nowadays that it is totally worth to have the piece of mind that your data is reasonably safe.