If u have Amazon Prime u get unlimited photo storage at original quality there. I’m going to go there I think
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Be useful to know what happens if you unsubscribe from Prime. 
They print them out and post them back to you. One at a time. Each one in a huge box.
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Ouch…
A long time ago I switched over to my own dedicated NAS to act as my photo back up server. I was using Google Photos simultaneously with iPhoto, as well as a whole load of HDD’s for the photos I’d taken on a non-Phone camera.
Migrating was chaos - maybe had 11 years of data to move over, hidden across… maybe 7 or 8 HDD’s of varying ages (and speeds!), plus I had to download all my iPhoto backups so I could upload them to the NAS.
Worth it though; I don’t have to worry about a change in someones policy that affects the quality of my photos. Really recommend a Synology NAS if people ever consider going down that route.
Does anyone remember the days of Picasa?
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I have no clue. It’s highly unlikely I’ll unsubscribe but if I did I have the photos backed up on an external drive anyway 
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Loved Picasa!
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Do you have any recommendations? This Google Photos thing made me think I shouldn’t rely on anyone else when it comes to storing my most precious memories. I don’t need something big or expensive, just two reliable discs so I can have at least 1TB storage with built-in redundancy.
Ease of use is also important since I gave up on laptops/desktops a long time ago and use nothing but an iPad and my phone.
I went with a Synology DS218 Play (about £200 for the NAS itself, plus the hard drives). It’s a 2 bay model, so you have built in redundancy (RAID1?)
I like Synology as it has a good number of mobile apps which allow you to back up your devices, and a nice photo library not terribly disimilar to Google Photo’s (albeit less intelligent).
I think you can do all the set up via an app / browser, so you shouldn’t be reliant on a PC, and once you’ve got things running you can run one of it’s few back up apps to sync things. The one downside is you need to remember to open up the app for sycning to work.
There’s also a DS220j which is a slightly lower specced 2 bay model, but likely is ample for just photos.
Only thing then to consider is how to back up your back up (321 model, and all - 3 sources of your data, 2 different media types, 1 offsite). Synology offer a cloud back up of your NAS too - at like a 6 EUR per month cost.
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Personally I think it’s the opposite. My photos are important enough that I rely on multiple services as well as my own storage.
I have a dedicated SSD, use Google Photos and Apple Photos and have Backblaze to backup the SSD. It may sound overkill but I’m lucky to be able to afford it and literally can’t think of another possession I would care more about if I lost.
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I pay for the Google One plan for £2.49 a month and have done for a while. I find it very good value - 200GB of cloud storage, full automatic backups of my Pixel, and 3% cashback on the Google store, which has given me some decent discounts since we’ve bought several Nest devices over the last year, and I got my Pixel Buds from their store too.
I don’t have product recommendations, but I used to work with a wedding photographer whose income depended on not losing data.
Hard drives are good, but not infallible. They can stop working, get stolen, or be destroyed in a fire.
Her strategy was to have a local, in office, back up which was the hard drive attached to her computer. At the end of every day, she cloned this drive to another drive she took home with her. In addition, all of her work was backed up to a paid for backup service.
That is overkill for non professional photographers, but the principle remains that data doesn’t really exist unless it is in three separate locations.
How you achieve this depends on your budget and the amount of time you want to put in, but local storage and two of Apple, Amazon, or Google seems reasonable to me for personal memories.
Edit: Just to add that if you do use Apple, Google, or Amazon, you’ll be uploading the metadata in the photo as well as the image. So any title, or tags, as well as date, time, and location.
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Thanks all!
My current approach is using Google Photos as a photo dump where everything gets uploaded – random snaps, screenshots, memes I download, etc. I also use iCloud Photos for a more curated catalogue of photos. I’m just hoping to migrate my photos from Google to a NAS or some other service where I won’t have to pay every single month to maintain an ever-growing library.
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We all got marinated by Google
Photos are a bit of a hobby of mine and I shoot RAW files, so I’ve got 1TB storage with Adobe Creative Cloud, plus access to Lightroom and Photoshop. It’s quite pricey at £20 per month, but it’s going to get a lot of use so I don’t mind.
As for Google, I wouldn’t rely on them for anything. They change their minds more often than most people change their underwear.
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Think that’s the big challenge with all of it really - like @Anarchist says, you’re data isn’t really backed up unless you have multiple copies.
Even with a NAS, I would still be looking for an external source somewhere.
I’m certainly not “income dependant level” - I’d go way overkill if I was - but I did lose about 9 months of photos that just made me revisit my approach.
I moved away from Google/iCloud, and I still pay for back ups, so I’m doing something wrong 
All that said though there are multiple ways you can back up an external HDD / networked drive - Synology C2 - is good because it pairs with your NAS, and has a versioned history (to whatever your schedule) - could have hourly back ups if you so requried.
Or you can use services like Backblaze for cheap too, or the first iteration I had which was backing up my NAS to Google Cloud and/or Dropbox.
Some routes are cheaper than others, but it’s really worth doing.
(The next thing I ought to do is really start deleting all those terrible photos that have absolutely zero value to keep but that’s a bit of effort).
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Does anyone know if Google will be adding a feature to see how much storage Goole Photos is using right now (even though its still free). It would give me a good idea of what I’m going to have to do in the future?
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Go to Google, click on your account avatar, click on ‘Manage my Google Account’, and then you should see a series of boxes including ‘Account storage’, where you can click ‘Manage storage’ to see the breakdown.
Yeah i have checked. Google Photos says 0GB but it’s full of pictures of the last 4 years
As much as I love a bit of drama and pot stirring - those trillions of photos will remain free forever*. It’s only the next trillion that are going to cost money if you want them uploading there also.