Friendly reminder: Google Photos free unlimited storage is ending (very) soon

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,256   +192
Staff member
Recap: Google late last year announced pending changes to its Google Photos unlimited high quality storage policy. Mark your calendar as the new policy is scheduled to go into effect in just a few days, so we wanted to remind you of everything it entails.

Starting June 1, any new photos and videos uploaded to Google’s sharing and storage service will count against the free 15GB of capacity that comes with every Google account (or the additional storage you might have purchased as a Google One member). Notably, Google account storage is shared across Photos, Drive and Gmail, so you’ll want to keep that in mind when divvying up space.

The changes don’t go into effect until June 1 (next Monday), meaning you’ve got until then to upload as many photos and videos as you’d like.

Also worth acknowledging is the fact that users with a Pixel smartphone are exempt from this exception.

It would be remiss of me not to also mention the risks associated with any and every cloud storage solution.

While most companies take multiple precautions to prevent data loss, mishaps do happen. Simply put, nobody cares more about your memories than you do. If the photos and videos you’re uploading to cloud storage are priceless to you, I’d highly recommend looking into a local backup strategy.

Image credit jakkapan

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By now many people (reading this site) know about Photos shutting down and have setup an alternative. What is your strategy?

Here's my story: grabbed an old phone with SD card, bought the biggest SD card I could find and installed Resilio Sync on it. That phone became my "Cloud": all devices sync to it, and because it's always online, it keeps the pics on all the family devices in sync. 250GB of free cloud storage. Cost: old phone +22$ high endurance SD card + 2W of power consumption 24/7.

Then there is the backup strategy, but that's a different story (3-2-1 is my favorite). Google Photos was never really backup; a pic deleted from Photos is deleted for good, no fallback.

*EDIT: Future expansion plan, if needed, is an USB-OTG storage device to the phone (could be that 2TB is the max of that solution)
 
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By now many people (reading this site) know about Photos shutting down and have setup an alternative. What is your strategy?

Here's my story: grabbed an old phone with SD card, bought the biggest SD card I could find and installed Resilio Sync on it. That phone became my "Cloud": all devices sync to it, and because it's always online, it keeps the pics on all the family devices in sync. 250GB of free cloud storage. Cost: old phone +22$ high endurance SD card + 2W of power consumption 24/7.

Then there is the backup strategy, but that's a different story (3-2-1 is my favorite). Google Photos was never really backup; a pic deleted from Photos is deleted for good, no fallback.

*EDIT: Future expansion plan, if needed, is an USB-OTG storage device to the phone (could be that 2TB is the max of that solution)

What if the SD card fail?
 
I know that this is a tech site, but the suggestions above are simply impossible to suggest or create by 98% of the world population.

Setting up a local backup involves more work, expenses and knowledge that many dont have.

The phone/resillio idea is a nice and simple one, but last time I tried resilio, it was a pain to setup on my home NAS, plus the issue that on certain places, the ports are blocked hence you cant access it.

You also need to open and maintaining a proper firewall at home, which needs to be carefully done.

You dont want to open ports at home? great, you then need to configure a proper VPN solution that can bypass the most restricted firewalls/networks.

Lastly, you still dont have a backup for that device, which means either a second device is needed somewhere else or pay a *gasp* cloud provider to do proper remote backups.

Those are just some of the issues of self hosting, so in the end, I prefer to pay Google or someone else a couple of bucks for extra storage and keep a copy at home or on another cloud provider.
 
Pixel owner here so I don't need to worry about this just yet. However this doesn't stop me having physical backups of the photos I take, they are on my PC, 2 separate portable HDDs and on Blu-Rays in a light proof box. I don't bother backing up photos taken with my phone, I do just leave that to Google Photos but I do feel a responsibility to protect the paid work I have done.
 
What if the SD card fail?
The "cloud" is backed upusing 3-2-1 strategy. Other have written well what that means, look it up.

If the SD card fails,my "cloud" has no central point until it gets replaced and restored from backup. The cloud would work, just degraded. Resilio Sync is decentralised, technically you don't even need the phone, but it's useful to have this central point in order to insure instant syncing.

I'm not saying it's a perfect solution, always in the lookout for a better idea
 
I disabled Google Photos when I found it's AI perusing creating shows out my photos. That's just creepy and too much spying.
That's my favourite bit about Photos! They scan the pics anyway, at least I'm getting something out of it

I will leave this link here, https://mylio.com/plans/
Looks good, never heard of them. Thanks!

I know that this is a tech site, but the suggestions above are simply impossible to suggest or create by 98% of the world population.
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98% don't read this site. I don't work for Resilio,nor do I have any gain from this post. Just saying this solution worked for me, and the next best thing I found is yes, paying Google. Problem is the missus and kids then need to pay up too and it adds up. And again, Google isn't backup. Yes it's off-site, but there's no versioning.
On opening the ports, TBH I've chosen this after reading tenths of pages and testing lots of softs. I tested the app on Android and Windows. Not sure about iOS and no idea about NAS. I haven't had to open/close manually anything on my router, very painless actually. The Andoid app is a bit clunky, but hey
 
I'm using amazon prime to store uncompressed photos as well in raw, which is great, and I paid minimum for Google storage to get 100gb of space, all pictures are backing up to those 2 clouds, and in addition local nas (which I need to upgrade). I don't consider Google as backup strategy due to compression and limited file options, but it is fine for quick sharing.
 
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