[callmevlad]

I'm in the same boat as nchuhoai, but I now have over 500GB of photos and videos to worry about (get a DSLR and some photogenic kids, and you'll see how quickly the GBs add up, even after heavy editing/deletion).

With DSLRs becoming more popular, and HD-quality video becoming more mainstream, I suspect that storing, sharing, and backing up these memories will become a much bigger concern for many people. Snapjoy's pricing page currently maxes out at 155GB @ $15/month, so that's clearly not going to cut it.

I use Picasa to manage all the photos/videos, and used to actually pay Google $100/year for 400GB of storage, until they increased it to $19.99/mo (2.4x more) and started to creepily over-share private photos on Google+. I also used to pay Mozy to back everything up, until they removed their unlimited plan and asked me to pay over $70/month for the data I already had there. If I choose to go with iCloud keep all my HD originals, I'll be paying at least $1200 per year.

I still haven't been able to find just one service to fit my needs. I've been using Facebook to share low-res photos, KickSend to send hi-res originals to specific people, and CrashPlan to back everything up both offline (to an ioSafe drive) and to their cloud (which still has an unlimited option).

Really hoping someone really cracks this nut and offers a compelling service where "overage" charges are in the TB range. Though I would bet that Apple, Microsoft, etc are hoping that folks get used to these storage prices to the point where people are as used to paying them as their cable TV bill.

[jmathai]

If you use OpenPhoto and use your own S3 bucket then you basically have a backup and sharing service in one. For 500GB you're probably cheaper than whatever iCloud is costing you plus you have similar if not better tools to manage and share your photos.

Edit: I'm not trying to hijack this Snapjoy thread btw :)

[callmevlad]

Storing 500GB on S3 would cost me over $60/month, which is pretty hard to swallow.

[jmathai]

Oh, I just meant in terms of what iCloud charges it's about 1/2.

ATM 500GB is a pretty large in terms of options for consumer storage. Good thing is that the prices should continually go down. Bad thing is you'll continually be accruing more and more photos :).

It's a great question though. That 500GB of photos has some real value to you. I wonder what that is. And what the risk of losing it by backing up at home vs S3 vs home + S3.