UKH

I’ve just seen a message whilst using the Amazon Photos sync client on my Windows PC that the sync service will cease to be available soon. That leaves Amazon’s “backup” as the only way to get photos from my PC to their cloud, which isn’t the same at all. Can anyone recommend a replacement for Amazon Photos, for photo storage and sync between devices?

Here’s how I currently use Amazon Photos, which I’ve been very happy with. I download photos from our (wife and I) cameras onto my PC into year-based folders. That then automatically syncs with Amazon’s cloud. Any subsequent edits or deletions are also replicated, although I tend to only edit a copy and keep the original untouched. I have a second PC as a backup which also syncs, as well as periodic backups to a NAS and offline hdd. My wife uses the Amazon Photos app on her iPad if she wants to use a photo on Instagram or wherever. Because we’re terribly old fashioned we occasionally go through the photos together on the PC and choose some to be printed and stuck in an album. I really liked the simplicity and reliability of this setup, and the ease with which my wife can access the photos on her iPad.

I have about 90GB of photos. I get “unlimited” photo storage with Amazon as part of my Prime membership but happy to pay for an alternative.

I don’t have much knowledge of options as I’ve just stuck with what I’ve known for a long time now.

However, as you and your wife have an iPad, you could consider iCloud Photos that’s part of the Apple ecosystem to see if it suits?

I haven’t used it with a win pc for some years now (I use a Mac) but it is meant to work with a pc as well as Apple devices. Adding photos to whatever folders you have permitted on your pc will sync with the cloud (and be stored there) and then synced with any connected devices (eg your wife’s iPad and your back up pc). Any edits on any of the connected folders will sync but be careful as that means deletions as well (though with Apple you have 30 days to recover).

On my Mac I actually have folders that I don’t allow to sync with iCloud as I store lots of raw files as well as JPEGs that I don’t want to sync for various reasons like they duplicates, still to be processed, etc. This allows a me to keep a separate backup direct on my Mac/offline Ssd as well as the iCloud for synced photos.

At 90Gb it is above the free storage that apple provide and so would cost £2.99/mth for the next smallest package (200 Gb).

Personally, I’ve found it easy to use and (except the initial bulk upload which can a considerable time) is fast and efficient in its syncing. The iPad’s native photo app had good editing features and will sync back edits to the Mac (or your win pc) and your wife can upload to Instagram or whatever from the Photos app supplied with the iPad.

Thanks. I have just been messing around with iCloud Photos. At the moment I can’t see any way of getting a Windows folder structure replicated through it. Maybe that isn’t such a deal breaker if I move to iCloud albums or just rely on the photos’ exif date to keep things organised, but I do quite like being able to have a folder for each year to minimise the impact of any apocalyptic mistakes. 

Have you looked at OneDrive? This comes as part of Office 365 Home Premium so you might have it already as you get Word, Excel etc. You get 5, although it may have risen to 6, accounts with the subscription and each account has 1TB of OneDrive storage. This can be accessed on all devices including IPhone and IPad and you can also back your photos up that you take on your phone to OneDrive automatically.

Dropbox works exactly the same by the sounds of it. The package I have gives me 2 TB storage.

Thanks. I just had a tinker with the Dropbox app. It’s not bad for photos is it. It’d be nice to have a few more photo-specific bells and whistles but if it syncs reliably in Windows it’s a winner.

Ah yes, maybe I misunderstood you. I don't do any editing within Dropbox. It's just a means of backing up on a cloud and having access across multiple devices.

No, you had me right, I don't need to edit within Dropbox either, just to be able to edit and sync photos and folders across multiple PCs and iPads, which I think is exactly what Dropbox does. Ideally I'd like the iPad access to be read only.

Id recommend staying away from one drive. I took it last year to back up all my photos(160gb). I had used the free one and thought having it integrated with windows was a good thing. I was very wrong. Once i had set the folders to back up, I couldnt view the thumbnails which is useless for looking through folders of photos. I Ended up having to have them saved at a separate location to look through them which I didnt have the disk space for. I decide to cut my losses and use it as a manual back up so I selected 'desync' on onedrive. With no warning it then procededed to delete all my photos, desktop content and documents (everything that I had set it to back up). 

I managed to recover about 120gb of the photos but it was a long process.

aside from this when I signed up they automaticallly started 'Microsoft Click to Run' which will download all of the office apps in the background in case one day you decide to use one without bothering to ask you.

I actually already have 365 with OneDrive on my PCs. It has everything apart from my photographs on it. I find the OneDrive iPad app pretty poor for photographs so I've steered clear of it for now for photos.

A few years ago OneDrive used to give me all sorts of syncing grief but it's been fine recently. I just tried putting a few photos onto the OneDrive directory on my PC and I can see the thumbnails fine. Not that I'm recommending Microsoft particularly - only this week a new icon appeared unasked-for: a trial for their Copilot AI thing. I asked it to write a letter of apology for installing software without asking me. To be fair it did a pretty good job.

The issues I had rose from asking it to directly back up my documents and photos rather than the one drive folder. When I done this the thumbails in my photos didn't work. I checked 'Store to device' which made the thumbnails visible again but it proceeded to copy everything on my one drive into the onedrive folder meaning it was stored on my PC twice. I didn't have the space for this so clicked 'unsync' assuming it would just stop double copying everything. It then actually deleted all 3 versions (original location in my documents/photos, online Onedrive location and PC onedrive folder) of every file I had asked it to back up.

Anytime your PC goes slow have a look at task manager. You'll likely see Sharepoint, Teams, Click to run and everything else you didnt ask for operating in the background.