I like to hedge my bets. I hope for the best but plan for the worst. I imagine on our trip we will bring a camera, a phone, an iPad and a small laptop. I do not doubt for a second that we are going to lose one of these things. It will happen. Losing the device itself will be an inconvenience but it will not be that big of a problem. The files and photos on a lost device would probably be more regrettable. For that reason, I cracked and got myself some cloud storage this year.
This is an instance where planning for the trip has had an immediate benefit on our current lives. We have two cell phones and two personal computers each in our family. Not too long ago we also had separate work phones and computers. Images and files lived on different devices with no discernable logic as to why one set of photos would be on one device versus another. Now with a cloud storage option, we can just back-up our files to a central location.
But the biggest current benefit is I no longer have to worry about a misplaced phone. We both have older models and it would suck to replace them but at least there is no fear about losing the precious impromptu kids videos that have been shot on the device. And yes I know one could easily just transfer files to the computer on a set basis but you have no idea how many times we’ve had to spend a couple hours tracking down a lost phone realizing we lost a full 6 months of pictures.
Why now and not later? Frankly, there was a sale on the service I was looking at. I’m cheap, I saw a deal and locked it in for a couple years. In the end, I ended up going with IDrive. There are a bunch of different options out there but for me the decision came down to price, storage size and ease of use across different platforms. We signed up for a plan that is probably way more than what we currently need but with the promo offer it was within budget. I went with a 5TB plan and laughed that it cost less than the 5G external hard drive purchased a couple years back.
It actually has taken us a couple weeks to sort out the kinks in the process. Backing up the 100GB from my wife’s devices took the better part of a week. Getting all the backups sync across the devices took some trial and error. But now things seem to be running smoothly. And each week I can log onto the cloud and see the videos we shot of the kids this week and know we’ve got them backed up somewhere.
Now there is one less thing we have to worry about when we hit the road.
Ciao for now.
Family Travel Countdown 