Hi,

Quick post here about cloud storage.  I use all of the major storage companies, Box, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive (formerly Skydrive), and I own several external hard drives, (Seagate= 🙁 Toshiba :)).  So to give you a quick rundown, Dropbox is the one I use most, because it integrates well with my phones, and has been the easiest to earn free storage. They gave me 50 free gb for buying Samsung products, and 500 free mb for each person I refer that downloads the app to their computer (no bonus for people that only download the app to their phone :(.)

Recently, however, since I started taking on wedding photography, I ran out of space with Dropbox. This is very annoying. Dropbox already runs slow on my desktop and laptop.  But one day I got frustrated because I was trying to access a picture for a client to see and I could not because my drive was full. So I upgraded to the 100 GB plan, $10 a month. There’s no contract, so I figured I’m not committed if I don’t need that much space all the time.

Anyway, of course the very next week Google Drive lowers their prices, and 1 TB of space is $10 per month! I love how Google+ works with photos, so I cancelled with Dropbox, and signed up with GDrive.  This is what I learned:

• Google Drive is much slower uploading & downloading files then Dropbox
• GDrive quits unexpectedly, OFTEN, for no reason that I can find
• I cant fill the TB of space, because after 2 weeks, my files are STILL uploading!
• I LOVE how Google Drive uses the jpeg previews of my raw files to make the auto awesome gifs and chooses my best photos for me.  It works great for sending sneak peeks to clients.

So what to do?  I started using Dropbox again for my transferring of files between work and home because GDrive just doesnt seem to be able to handle the amount of activity I have with my booming photography business :).  I am still working out a solution, but I think Im going to downgrade my Google Drive service to 100 GB, which costs $1.99 per month.  Let me know if you have any suggestions..or experience with cloud storage.  I looked at the other services, and the prices are no comparison.  Also, my new external hard drive came with unlimited cloud storage for a reasonable amount, but I dont know how it will integrate with my phone.

Decisions Decisions!

~DreAM Big in 2014

Amber