I don't know why I resist the cloud so much. My work has gone full cloud for document management and data-basing and I kind of hate it. For something like photo storage where you aren't trying to update it every hour, it would probably work well.

We just do a two prong hardware backup. I have a first level backup that gets dumped into every 9 months or so. It wasn't large enough to keep full backups from different dates, so it would only hold the most recent. Then I have a 2TB hard drive that acts as a secondary backup. We have not had to delete anything off of that drive yet.

Now, the real flaw in my plan is that they are both stored in my house. They are in different rooms, so I very isolated incident wouldn't get both. But a fire or other major disaster would probably destroy both. Maybe I'll take the plunge to cloud backup.

My wife also loves to regularly print the pictures. We'll go through and pick our favorite hundred or so from the past 9-12 months and make a photobook or collage or just regular prints. Digital is great, but there is something nice about having physical copies.