Leo is on his soapbox again. I am thinking external Hard Drive. How can I do this without a USB port. When I bought my Chromebook I found out too late it does not have a USB port. WTF
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Does it have a USB-C port? I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of a Chromebook without any ports.
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There is a c port for charging. Can that also be used as an external drive?
This is a Samsung Pro XE 510C
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Yes. You should be able to use that port for an external HD. Either get a USB-C equipped drive or a USB-C to USB-A adapter.
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Yes, the USB-C port is a data port too. If you only have one port, get a USB-C hub that allows you to charge and use other USB devices at the same time.
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Thanks so much I am shopping now!!!
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My chromebooks have two Typc C ports and 1 Type A port.
But, you either need to find a Type C drive, or just an adapter to turn Type A into Type C.
My Samsung S8 phone came with that conversion plug for free. But they are just a few dollars on Amazon.
You could also put files on more than 1 cloud service. Like One Drive and Google Drive or Google Photos. That is another possibility instead of an external drive. If you are an amazon prime member, you can store original photos there for free as well
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Thanks for the Amazon Prime advise. I will do that, plus I have a type C thumb drive on the way. I plan to toss it into my bank safety deposit box for off site saving like Leo said.
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I probably am in the overkill category, but I have all my photos copied onto an external HD and google photos and iCloud and One Drive and an external HD that I keep at my sons house…which I update once or twice a year…so the most recent aren’t on it. I worry more about my old photos than the most recent anyway…usually. The costs of the extra space in One Drive and iCloud are pretty minimal for the peace of mind, plus, I can use them for important documents as well.
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I’m in the same boat. I’ve got my photos in Lightroom CC, Google Photos, Amazon Photos, a Drobo, and a backup external HD.
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That sounds like a nightmare keeping synced.
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Surprisingly, it isn’t. Lightroom CC is the “source.” All originals are automatically copied to the Drobo. The Amazon Photos app and Synctoy take care of the rest.
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Mines pretty easy, too. The online backups happen automatically as does Time Machine. I do weekly backups of all my documents, photos, music library, etc. to my external HD and just have to remember my twice a year HD exchange at my sons house which I do usually on my birthday (mid summer) and Christmas…two times I can actually remember! 
. Since I’ve done weekly backups on my files since before some of you may have been born 
it’s a well established habit.
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My photos go to iCloud, Google Photos and OneDrive. OneDrive has the advantage that it syncs to my computer too. A backup script uses Robocopy to sync to my local server.
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Welcome to the land of the dongles! All these manufacturers are trying to minimize the number of ports, and putting the burden on the consumer to carry around a third-party device to connect everything. But yes. USB-C does carry power and data amongst other things. And depending on the type of USB-C port, it can also carry video using a USB-C to HDMI adapter.
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I use Duplicati to back up to a local NAS in raid 1 config. Everything is then backed to a cloud back up provider. The cloud back up provider provides unlimited data. This means that nothing is ever deleted from their server, unless I want it to be.
My main machine automatically starts at 5am each day to carry out all Duplicati back up / sync work before I start my day. The cloud backup service runs while my machine is on backing up my main machine continuously.
In my Windows days I also used Acronis to do automatic system images each night too. When I moved to Ubuntu, in the early days I used Clonzilla to do manual disk image back ups but I have not done this for some time now.
Apart from the NAS that has mechanical disks all disks/all machines I have are SSD or NVME, which make local back ups nice and quick.
I have thought about putting the NAS somewhere away from from my house so I would be in more control of my back ups instead of using a cloud provider but decided at this point not to as my local NAS is an old cheap sloooow one so I would need a new NAS. When I looked at the costs I would have around 4 years of the cloud providers service before the NAS was paid off and then I would be looking at replacing the disks, which would give me around 2 years more cloud service. So for now I am staying with the cloud back up. Although my old cheap NAS must be near end of life, so I will end up buying a new NAS anyway. I will go for a Synology NAS this time if I purchase one but I may build my own for fun.
For normal home end users that ask me about back up I usually recommend a cloud service back up as in my experience the local USB drives get disconnected, used for something else, the back up is turned off and now with the prevalence of ransomeware local drives will be encrypted too. So many times I have had the statement that they have a back up to get a file back. When I check the back up USB drive the last back up was in 2004 
The cloud back up option is great as the user does not have to do anything do and it is more difficult to disrupt. Saying this, nothing is perfect and I have had people that did not pay the cloud providers invoice. As they had no idea what the invoice was for as the cloud back up sits there in the background doing it’s job the user forget they have a service doing this or their card expires etc etc.
One thing to be aware of is, from memory Google unlimited photo storage does not store photos at full resolution unless you use the paid service, this may or may not be important to you. I am not sure about Amazon.
Edit: Photo of current Google limits from https://www.google.com/photos/about/
Edit 2: Amazon Prime Photos limit from: https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Photos/b?node=13234696011
Amazon Photos : Amazon Photos offers unlimited full-resolution online photo storage, and 5 GB free video storage, to Prime members
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I’m surprised no one has mentioned (or I missed the mention) WiFi drives. I have a WD 4TB drive that creates its own WiFi network, and can log into my home WiFi network. I can use it while logged in to my home network, or take it anywhere (in the middle of the Arizona desert for instance). It also has an SD card reader I can upload my photos directly from.
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I save the raw images to a WiFi hard drive, edit copies on my iPad Pro, and then automagically upload them to google and amazon photos. Amazon, if you’re a prime member, allows unlimited full sized, and raw storage.
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Really dumb question on my part…I’m a Prime member but have never set it up to backup my photos…and I should as it’s included. Where on Amazon do I go to do this? Settings? (Am I lazy or what!). I’ve just never seen where to do this.
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