On December 31, 2016, when most people celebrate the New Year, Seagate ended an era.
Seagate Lyve, a cloud photo backup service with a local drive connection, went offline on the 31st.
What is (or was) Lyve?
For its many users, Lyve was a great way to organize their photo collection, without the hassle of organizing it themselves. Lyve customers kept millions of pictures, videos, memories, and artwork on the cloud service.
The Lyve customers are now learning that putting all their eggs into one cloud “basket” can end in disaster.
What does this mean for Lyve users?
- Potential loss of data. All accounts will be permanently deleted.
- Users need to find an alternative for storage (e.g., export their data to a new backup location).
What Seagate is doing to Help Lyve Customers Keep Their Photos
Seagate is partnering with Amazon so Lyve users can move data to Amazon’s cloud for free (great!). But the service is only free for 6 months (not great).
Additionally, Lyve Home users can register to receive a FREE 2TB Seagate hard drive for local storage.
How You Can Use Cloud (and Local) Backup Safely
For many people, backing up data isn’t second nature yet. So here are some best practice recommendations for Lyve customers (and Cloud Storage in general):
- If you do use Lyve, take advantage of the free 2TB hard drive! Great for local copies.
- Always keep backups in more than one place.
- Keep a local copy of important files.
- Either use a private cloud backup, or a hybrid cloud to keep extra backups offsite, like Microsoft’s OneDrive.
- If you need help backing up your important files from Seagate Lyve, please contact PlanetMagpie Support for help.
Whether you are preserving memories, or backing up important business information, data loss is devastating. Seagate Lyve users—and anyone else using cloud services for backup—should remember one important thing.
Don’t rely solely on one backup option. You may wake up one day to find you’ve lost everything.
Got a tech question you need answered? Please email us at woof@planetmagpie.com and we may make it our next Tech Tip.