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Hard drive full - Using unlimited Flickr as an alternative ??

I

igmolinav

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 15, 2005
1,126
4
Hi,

My ibook's hard drive is full. I have 15 GB with pics, and 24 GB with video.

I am thinking about getting an external hard drive.

However, Flickr offers the possibillity of unlimited storage for $24.95

Their advertisement reads as follows:

Here's what you get...
  • Unlimited uploads and storage
  • Unlimited sets and collections
  • Access to your original files
  • Stats on your account
  • Ad-free browsing and sharing
  • HD playback for high-definition video uploads NEW

Given that I have never used flickr, (and that I hear that everybody is using it ; ) !!!), I would like to ask you a few questions about it:

If I get this account, I would upload and store the 15 GB of pics, and the 24 GB with video. As soon as I have uploaded them, I would erase those almost 40 GB of pictures and video from my hard drive, freeing up 40 GB of space !!!

Now, suppose i want to download from flickr at any given time any of those pictures, just to see them or to work on them. Is it possible ??

Or, let's say, I buy a hard drive in a year from now, and I want to have all my pictures and videos back in it. Is it possible to download all of them? Does flickr has a right to keep copies for itself?

Is it possible to play the uploaded videos?

Can one keep different folders, and choose privacy settings?

Are you using, or do you suggest any other alternatives to this $24.95
yearly package?? Perhaps an external hard drive??

In advance, thank you very much : ) !!!

Very kind regards,

igmolinav.
 
I would recommend you sign-up for a free (basic) Flickr account and see how you like it.

Unless you have a super-fast internet connection, and don't need to access your photos or video from anywhere there is not an internet connection, I would go with the external hard drive.

Have fun!
 
First of all, don't do this. Flickr is not a place to dump your entire collection and use it like an online storage service. It is best for showing your photos to the world. If you are looking for a place online to just dump files I'd look at Dropbox (My shameless referral link) and then upgrade to a paid plan. You can get 50GB of storage for $10 a month.

Now, to answer your questions.
You can download your photos but it's not "simple" process. It takes several steps to do so.

You can download all of your photos, one at a time. I don't believe that Flickr has any rights to the photos.

Yes, you can play the uploaded videos.

You can make "Sets" and "collections" which are like of like folders. And you can change privacy settings for each photo.

Personally I'd recommend biting the bullet and buying a large external hard drive. You can get 1TB drives for $100-150 (at least that's what I got mine for).
Now, I have a Flickr Pro account and I love it for what it is: a place to upload photos so others can see them. But It really isn't designed to be a place to store your files instead of a hard drive.
 
I would avoid going the flickr route for a couple of reasons.

Number 1 is I don't trust anyone else to look after my important data. If Flickr ever ceases operation, you could lose everything overnight with no prospect of retrieval.

Number 2 is the bandwidth required for this. Depending on your ISP, it may take you a few months to upload this data without exceeding your monthly cap (and a few months to download it again).

Number 3 is access. How do you get at your videos stored on Flickr? Does it stream them, do they have to be in a specific format going up for you to watch them? I have not looked into Flickr at all for video, maybe they have a good solution for this.

It will cost a bit more, but personally I would either upgrade the hard drive in the computer and/or buy external hard drives. Make sure all of your important documents are on at least 2 drives. I currently keep things on the computer and 2 external drives that get rotated (stored in different places in the house) and for really important data, on a third drive at a friends house.

If 40 gigs is giving you a problem, you may be able to find someone that will give you a hard drive with enough hard drive space to take the pressure off. Anything smaller than 500 I don't use anymore and I'm sure other people are the same.
 
Hi,

Thank you very much to for your super cool advice : ) !!!

Very kind regards,

igmolinav : ) !!!
 
Given the drive size you're talking about...

Go to Newegg.com - there are several 80GB external drives for between 37 and 42 bucks. Buy two, and use one as the backup of the other.

Heck, they've got 250GB drives for 50 bucks!
 
Hello,

Thank you again for your help : ) !!!

I just took a look today at hard drives and the prices are very good !!!

Drop box also looks very cool !!!

Thank you again, very kind regards,

igmolinav.
 
I would strongly against using flickr as your only way to store pictures. At least get an external harddrive. I've paid ~€ 100 for 1 TB of storage a few months ago. That's a lot, log bigger than what you have now.
 
Westside guy said:
Given the drive size you're talking about...

Go to Newegg.com - there are several 80GB external drives for between 37 and 42 bucks. Buy two, and use one as the backup of the other.

Heck, they've got 250GB drives for 50 bucks!
Click to expand...

Apologies for bumping this old thread. But i guess its better that opening an new thread.
I would like to know.. how will an external hdd or nas storage help in this situation, and how to make it work??
 
This is a very stupid plan. I have a $150 memory card in my camera that could eat all of your "pics" on a daily basis, as it did again today. There should always be a local copy of your data, in case the Flickr bosses decide to suddenly discontinue services, raise rates to something you can't afford, or lose your data. Ask Flickr if you get a guarantee of service reliability and insurance protection against data loss on their end. Yeah, right. :rolleyes: Now is spending $100 or less on a 1 TB hard drive worth it?
 
holyindian said:
Apologies for bumping this old thread. But i guess its better that opening an new thread.
I would like to know.. how will an external hdd or nas storage help in this situation, and how to make it work??
Click to expand...

No, it is not better than opening a new thread, when the subject of your new thread is not the same as the original subject - Flickr versus local storage. Hard drive storage is getting cheaper and cheaper, so it is no longer unreasonable to maintain a JBOD array to handle your storage requirements for digital content.
 
arogge said:
No, it is not better than opening a new thread, when the subject of your new thread is not the same as the original subject - Flickr versus local storage. Hard drive storage is getting cheaper and cheaper, so it is no longer unreasonable to maintain a JBOD array to handle your storage requirements for digital content.
Click to expand...

I was in the same dilemma, I was planning to get premium fickr account for pictures.
While searching, i hit upon this thread, hence the bump. Asking other forum members to help.
 
I think using Flickr would be a very, very bad idea for your ONLY storage option.

Given the low cost of disk drives these days, you should have at least 1 backup and possibly more.

If you want to keep more photos on an internal drive, a larger one is pretty easy to install into an iBook. I replaced my iBook drive in about an hour in a hotel room on a business trip after it died 1 day into a week long Kodak training trip.

And for external drives, those are even cheeper in a per gb comparison. I just got a 1.5 tb drive for additional offline backup at WalMart for $50.

I believe this person would also have some negative things to say about flickr.

Woops...old thread. Damn. Sorry.
 
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