Cloud storage

Don’t risk your photos: whisk them up into the safety of the cloud

Backing up your shots is hardly a blast, and that was especially the case back when that meant spending time burning them to CDs. Fortunately, keeping your photos safe is now much easier thanks to the cloud. Put simply, ‘the cloud’ is just techno-jargon for online storage. You can choose from numerous websites offering anywhere between 1GB and 1TB of free remote hard drive space.

Backing up like this doesn’t just eliminate the hassle of dealing with discs or hard drives, it also enables you to access your photos from anywhere with an internet connection. The ability to share shots is another bonus, while websites like Flickr let you exhibit your images to the world, with scope for other users to leave feedback. Of course, if you’d rather keep your photos private, most cloud storage providers make it easy to set restrictions to make images accessible only to your passwordprotected account, or to anyone with a private web link.

We’ve compared six of the best cloud storage websites; three aimed at photographers and three suited to general storage.