Mat Honan hacking incident and his utter regret on the loss of his photos with his new born daughter of which he had no backups. Thankfully, Mat managed to recover those photos but this should ring some alarm bells for those who are yet to understand the importance of backups, especially dispersed backups . In the past, we have seen how to backup photos from various online services to our computer but how safe do you think a local backup is? Not 100% of course. Online backups are also not always safe, but as I mentioned, dispersed backups meaning backups to multiple services reduces the risk considerably. Backing up photos to multiple networks manually is an option, but not the best one. PicBackMan, on the other hand, is a simple freeware that helps you to keep your photos safe on multiple services effortlessly. Using PicBackMan, you can backup your local photos and photos from social services like Facebook, Instagram and Foursquare to online storage solutions like Flickr, Dropbox, SkyDrive, Picasa, etc.
Using PicBackMan to Backup Photos
To use PicBackMan, you will have to install an application on your computer. Currently the tool is only available for Windows but developers have promised to launch it for Mac, iOS and Android soon. After you install the application, you need to register for a free account which would be used to identify all your connected accounts in the future. Once you log in, PicBackMan will show you a list of all the services it can handle. The services will be divided in two lists. All the services mentioned in the top list are the ones you can backup your photos to, while the second list is the one you can backup from. Next, you must connect all the accounts you wish to use on PicBackMan. Some of the services will directly ask for your login credentials while you will have to authorize the access using the service itself in others. After you have connected all the accounts you would need, open the Backup tab to configure the backups. As I already mentioned, you can backup both—your local photos and online photos. To backup photos from your computer, click on Associate Folder and select the folders where you save all your photos on your computer. If there are subfolders you want to backup as well, you can select that after adding the folder. If you want to add photos from services like Facebook, foursquare and Instagram, click on the button Associate Account. Just make sure you are connected to the service from PicBackMan before making the request. Once you have associated the folders and the online accounts you wish to backup, check all the services you wish to make the backup to and click the Upload button. The thing to note here is that the service does not save your bandwidth when you are uploading the photos to online services. For e.g. if you are backing 100 photos to 5 online services, it will cost you 5 times the size of your photos in your bandwidth quota. The tool also gives you a brief insight of the amount of free space you have on all your connected accounts. You can view the details by hovering the mouse cursor over the pie chart next to all the connected accounts in the Accounts tab. Also, you can keep the Upload when ideal option checked and keep your photos backed up in the background. Don’t forget to check the tool’s optional settings.
Conclusion
PicBackMan is a great tool to backup photos but you will need an internet connection with no upload cap to make the most of this tool. Users who are on a limited internet connection can use the tool but always keep a constant check on your bandwidth usage. Resizing the photos to reduce upload size would be an intelligent thing to do. The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.
