Photo sharing sites

I was recently talking to a friend about the fear of losing all of my digital pics in an instant. I have heard of all the sites but for whatever reason have never seriously looked into it. I back up all of my pics onto an external hard drive but that even worries me. I would imagine that they are all pretty much similar. I checked out Shutterfly and was glad to see it is free with no obligation to buy anything. My friend says that some sites are free but only with a minmum purchase. However, Shutterfly, from what I've seen so far won't allow me to upload my folders as is. meaning I have to upload each folder seperately. With over 20K pics, this could take a while.

What do you folks use and what are the pros and cons with it? Is there a site that will allow me to upload my pics as is in one fell swoop or are they all the same when it comes to starting?

Burn em onto DVD or BluRay too.

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Originally Posted by kingkrazy

I was recently talking to a friend about the fear of losing all of my digital pics in an instant. I have heard of all the sites but for whatever reason have never seriously looked into it. I back up all of my pics onto an external hard drive but that even worries me. I would imagine that they are all pretty much similar. I checked out Shutterfly and was glad to see it is free with no obligation to buy anything. My friend says that some sites are free but only with a minmum purchase. However, Shutterfly, from what I've seen so far won't allow me to upload my folders as is. meaning I have to upload each folder seperately. With over 20K pics, this could take a while.

What do you folks use and what are the pros and cons with it? Is there a site that will allow me to upload my pics as is in one fell swoop or are they all the same when it comes to starting?

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For local storage I keep my photos on my hard drive and i have a backup on an external that i run once a week.

My workflow consists of doing my edits in either elements or lightroom and then importing the finished product into Picasa. I then upload some of my pictures to Picasa web albums. You get 1 gig free or you can pay for more. There is more details on pricing Here. Personally, I pay 5 bucks a year for 20 GB though i will need to upgrade soon. I know you have to pay but you don't have to worry about anything being deleted\pruned due to inactivity.

Also, Picasa lets you send out url's to specific galleries to people along with letting you make stuff private and public.