Online Storage for my photos - options?

[Jim A]

I want to get online storage for my photos for safety (1 Tb). Even though I backup fairly regularly on two different external hard drives, that is not completely safe. A good low cost option seems to be Microsoft One Drive. Have checked out the internet and there are many different top ten (etc) suggestions. It gets pretty involved. Any suggestions re things to be aware of, or other storages sites please?

[DanK]

I use an online backup that runs in the background—currently, Backblaze. I don’t have to pay any attention to it, it backs up the rest of my files as well, and, importantly, it’s off-site. My first backup, actually a synch, not a true backup, is to an external drive. That takes a few seconds to start.


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[Jim A]

Many thanks, Dank, another two people, on a different forum have also suggested this. Have had an initial look and will check further!

[shreds]

A combination of methods undoubtedly has to be the safe route.

Online storage is dependent on connection and the providers ability to avoid outages, plus if subscription based, ensuring you never miss a payment. Physical drives you control are subject to all the potential physical problems and corruptions that can occur, so various drives in different locations are essential too.

All depends how risk averse and important / valuable your collection actually is. No doubt the likes of the Getty library are likely to survive. In future a large part of our incredibly over photographed heritage collections will be lost to posterity. A reflection on how common photography in its many different forms, now is.

[davidedric]

I think with any backup the starting point should be to decide which risks you are wanting to mitigate, and plan from there.

My off site solution is CrashPlan, for all my data. I'm happy enough with it as a solution, though I wasn't happy when they abandoned their home solution, and now only offer "small business" as their lowest tier.

Whichever solution you choose, be sure to test that you can actually restore stuff before ​disaster strikes.

Dave

[DanK]

IMHO, there is a basic principle here: if you are serious about backing up, you should have more than one backup copy, and one should be off-site. Something that ruins your main hard drive can also ruin an external drive sitting next to it. Beyond that, it is mostly a matter of convenience.

My system is very simple. As soon as I upload photos to my computer, I sync them to an external drive. This takes seconds. There are lots of tools for this, but I use the file synchronizer bundled with Powerdesk Pro. This synced copy is my primary "backup" in that it exactly mirrors my hard drive, and if I need to retrieve a file, I can just copy it. As soon as the files are uploaded, the online backup starts sending them to the cloud, without my paying any attention. this is only my failsafe, which I will rely on in the very unlikely even that my computer and external drive are both damaged. Like Dave, I used to use CrashPlan for this, but when they dropped their home-user option, I switched to BackBlaze, which is a similar service but cheaper. It has gone up a bit, but it is currently $60 US/year.

Eventually, I will fill up my external drive. At that point, I will make two copies of those files, including the catalogs, on two new external drives. One will sit in my study, and the other will stay in my safe deposit box. With those taken care of, I will start a new iteration of my basic procedure.

[Geoff F]

How big are your images and how fast is your internet, Jim?

I once tried cloud storage for a couple of days but attempting to upload hundreds of images at 5,000 pixels wide in Raw or Psd format was taking forever with my 'super snail broadband'.

So now I use two external drives, plus the internal one. And one drive is kept in the shed at the bottom of my garden.

[Jim A]

Whichever solution you choose, be sure to test that you can actually restore stuff before ​disaster strikes.
Dave

Good point, Dave

[Jim A]

IMHO, there is a basic principle here: if you are serious about backing up, you should have more than one backup copy, and one should be off-site. Something that ruins your main hard drive can also ruin an external drive sitting next to it.

Good point Dan - however I only bring the external drive and connect at the time I do the backups. I want an online system as a failsafe. Did try leaving an external drive at neighbours, but too much messing around!

[Jim A]

How big are your images and how fast is your internet, Jim?

Yes, but I have done the sums after a fashion, Geoff. Whilst on wireless my upload speed is on at present about 3.2 to 3.7 Mgs a sec. My Nikon Raw files are about 24 mgs each. It would take me about a week to upload my entire catalogue by uploading 24/7. However, have now ordered fibre optic connection with download of about 50 Mgs and upload of about 10 Mgs.

[shreds]

As we progress into a digital world, it is a little sad to hear that we are not the only ones that suffer slow speeds in parts of countries which are considered ‘developed’. I have three locations where I utilise broadband internet connections on a very regular basis. Obviously there is a cost in each but the one I consider reasonably acceptable is a 50-60Mbps download and an 18-30Mbps upload. Infrastructure should be Govt funded to take all locations to double that, but I can see that taking some years.

Outages are irritating and frustrating when some idiot puts a digger through a cable too particularly when the service is relied upon for business.

[DanK]

however I only bring the external drive and connect at the time I do the backups. I want an online system as a failsafe

That's my thinking exactly; I use the online system only as a failsafe.

Whilst on wireless my upload speed is on at present about 3.2 to 3.7 Mgs a sec. My Nikon Raw files are about 24 mgs each. It would take me about a week to upload my entire catalogue by uploading 24/7.

yes, it is very slow the first time. I think my first uploads to both CrashPlan and Backblaze took over a week. However, other than wasting a little electricity, it's not an inconvenience. I just turned off the monitors when I was done working and let the computer keep running.

[xpatUSA]

As we progress into a digital world, it is a little sad to hear that we are not the only ones that suffer slow speeds in parts of countries which are considered ‘developed’.

I live in rural Texas with no phone line. My connection is via the cellular phone network; after 50GB my "unlimited" bandwidth is dropped to 75 Kb/s at best and, when the family is visiting, I see 0.0 Kb/s for several minutes an hour. Doing anything cloud-wise is a joke for me except for a few halcyon days at the beginning of the month when we bask in a whopping 1 Mb/s ...

whine, whine ... :-(

[Geoff F]

It gets like that sometimes, Ted. A friend at the other end of the road gets 36Mb on uploads but he the last of the fibre connections; so a few hundred yards further on I think myself lucky to have 1 Mb on an old copper wire supply.

[Jim A]

I did get all keen on BackBlaze and started their free trial earlier today. However am going to discontinue because although my Upload speed tends to be about 8.7 Mgs a second, it was only transferring at speeds between 0.47 and 2.16 Mgs a second. It reckoned that I would transfer only 1.35 Gigs a day! Even my virtually unthrottling the speed to favour backups over network, it only went to 2.23 Mgs a second.

Also, it would not let me exclude my C Drive. I only want to back up my Photos on the G Drive!