What happens when free Google Photos storage is no longer free?

Last Wednesday, Google Photos announced it would stop offering free unlimited storage for high-quality photos on June 1, 2021. Google will count photographs uploaded after the date towards the 15GB Drive cap. If the account is inactive or exceeds the 15GB limitation for two years, Google may delete the photos after warning. Users will either need to pay a recurring fee or look for an alternative if they run out of room.

As such policy change is projected to affect more than 1 billion users worldwide, many may start to wonder what they ought to do with their existing or any other photos taken going forward. Several remedies are available in the market at the moment, such as shifting towards other cloud storage services that offer freemium models or upgrading to a paid Google storage plan. Though most of the top cloud storage vendors such as OneDrive, Amazon Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud offer a certain amount of free storage space, none of them exceeds Google’s whopping 15GB storage space. This means, ultimately, it all comes down to upgrading public cloud storage plans regardless of the platforms.

For Google Drive, though it seems like there are several plans available for upgrade if we consider SSD-based laptops like Macbooks or smartphones’ base amount to be 256GB for most people nowadays, to store this amount of data on the cloud can cost you around USD 120 per year! The annual accumulated fee could be a considerable expense.

Other alternative options?

If managing photos on the public cloud with a recurring subscription fee is not preferred, another approach is to go back to storing photos on external hard drives. However, this approach never ceases to address the inconvenience of managing and centralizing photos and the risk of natural and physical damage. Moreover, external hard drives are vulnerable to other common data loss risks, such as viruses and human error. Besides, migrating all photos from the public cloud to multiple external hard drives is troublesome and hectic.

If both alternatives do not suffice to the growing amount of pictures in the long run, an on-premise device or private cloud may be a solution. Network-attached storage (NAS), a device with terabytes of storage space connected to a more secured home or office network, offers users higher-level data ownership, data protection and recovery features, and comprehensive public cloud-level accessibility.

Synology NAS device for Network Attached Storage
A storage device at home or a private cloud may be a solution.

Let’s take a look at why the above mentioned give NAS an edge:

Data protection & recovery

Data loss is often due to human errors like accidental deletion, hardware failure, or ransomware attacks. On top of it, countless celebrity photo leaks or data loss incidents from different public cloud providers have been reported over the years, making more people aware that the notion of public cloud services being completely safe and secure is just untrue.

NAS solution, on the other hand, is ideal because several NAS providers like Synology have a complete backup applications ecosystem that helps users to deploy all-around photo backup and data protection. By seamlessly integrating the backup solutions with a NAS device, users can achieve various photoprotection strategies without being wary of lost or damaged photos.

Low total cost of ownership

Let’s put things into perspective. If we use 2 TB storage space as a benchmark, as mentioned earlier, if a user pays for a 2 TB Google Drive storage space for Rs. 6500 a year to save and maintain the integrity of his or her photo gallery, the total cost of ownership accumulated will grow to Rs. 32,500 in 5 years, and significantly and ultimately be a heavy burden for many people going forward.

NAS, on the other hand, only requires initial hardware cost. A starting range 2-bay NAS device plus two 2 TB NAS drives for RAID purposes still only adds up to Rs. 29,000. In the long run, this can be lower than paid public cloud services. Not to mention that a NAS usually comes with 2 to 5 years of warranty. Thus, NAS is an obvious choice regarding economic value and flexibility. Your photos and videos are right there with you at home. With cloud services, you have the added bandwidth cost when you have to download your photos and videos to view on your devices.

Comprehensive photo management appliance

Some NAS vendors even provide mobile apps and photo management appliances like Google Photos to not only help users to manage photo storage share, and access portfolios on the go but also offer modern browsing and uploading experiences for photos that users capture in daily life. To turn it up a notch, a handful of NAS device even has built-in image recognition and deep learning algorithm that assists users in grouping photos according to similar topics and categories.

A scalable and efficient NAS storage device can be viewed as a once in for all photo management solution. Users no longer need to be wary of when the public cloud vendors are going to start charging an additional subscription fee, so photos or data need to be migrated elsewhere, nor do users have to worry about photo management issues such as data loss, scattered photos, and the recurring fee that is more significant than it seems in the long run.

With all the benefits mentioned above, NAS vendors, such as Synology have now designed their OS to be very intuitive and easy to use; just like operating a PC, it’s time to say goodbye to the free storage hoax and build your cloud storage with a NAS!

Photo Viewer on Synology NAS software
Some NAS brands even have built-in image recognition and deep learning algorithm that assists users in grouping photos according to similar topics and categories.

Guest Post by: Joanne Weng, Senior Sales Manager (HQ), Synology Inc

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