Cloud Backup of Your Photographic Collection?

[Guest]

All

 

I'm interested in how other photographers are safeguarding their irreplaceable photographic collection from loss or corruption. I've religiously backed up from PC to several 1 TB (terrabyte) external hard drives over the last 10 years, but remain paranoid that one day that will fail too. Some of my earliest CD backups (remember CDs - only 650Mb max - or less than 100 pics in today's money) are also not performing that well when tested.

 

I've recently moved across to a cloud storage provider, and have just spent the last four days uploading over 200Gb of photo folders to them. At less than GBP £10 per month, with on-line access and folder structures from anywhere with an internet connection, I am now sleeping a little better at night knowing that there is a remote, secure copy of my work, just in case the local fire service ever has need to turn up for real. 

 

Is anyone else using the cloud for this purpose yet? I'd be interested to learn the level of interest and the sort of companies that provide a decent level of storage and access. I'm using LiveDrive for my purposes, who provide a standard maximum of 5 TB of storage.

 

Cheers - John 

[hank]

Hi John: I was very concerned about my collection and I continually
backed up my files on CD's and DVD's. Then I heard an ad for Carbonite
and I checked into it and decided that for fifty nine dollars a year this
would be the answer to my back up plan. If I do hit a good job, I still
use a backup to disk and generally give a copy to the local departments
to retain for their files. I have over ten thousand images in my collection.
I hope I was of some help and I'm not sure just how the "cloud" works.

tHANKs

[Guest]

Hi Hank

 

Thanks for the feedback. I'm interested in what other options exist, and how the pricing plans compare for individual/home users.

 

"Cloud computing" involves the use of a large number of different computer resources, networked together - commonly by the internet. This distributed computing environment means that users are not worried about specifically which hardware or systems they are connected or where they are located, as long as the resources are available when and where they need them. I work for a public sector cloud provider (not any of the companies mentioned in this thread), and it's our responsibility to make sure that there is enough compute power, storage capacity and network bandwidth to keep all the cloud users happy 24 x 7.

 

Cheers - John

[Guest]

Hi Hank

 

Thanks for the feedback. I'm interested in what other options exist, and how the pricing plans compare for individual/home users.

 

I wouldn't rely on some company. They could go out of business, have equipment failures - who knows what might happen?

Presently I have two 500GB external hard drives. When leaving a fire, I take the SD card out of the camera and replace it with one of the spares. .

When I get home, the first thing I do is copy all the photos onto both external HDs. Then I choose which photos to send to the PIO for his Press Release and some for updating my Zenfolio site. After that I delete all the photos from the SD card and it goes into my pocket along with a spare battery, ready for the next fire.

[Guest]

I currently use a Buffalo external hard drive with a raid 5 config.. Its been up and running for about 18 months currently...  Little pricey when I bought it, but I have over a 100,000 images on it and still going...  Still have loads of old stuff to scan as well. 

[Guest]

I currently use a Buffalo external hard drive with a raid 5 config.. Its been up and running for about 18 months currently...  Little pricey when I bought it, but I have over a 100,000 images on it and still going...  Still have loads of old stuff to scan as well. 

 

External Hard Drives have been known to fail. That's why I use two. HDs are relatively inexpensive now.

[Bryce]

I use Microsoft Skydrive.  I pay $50 a year for 100gb of storage.  I am a complete sucker for Google and all of its related products, but after doing a bunch of research Skydrive turned out to be the best choice for me.  So far it's worked really well.  It's super easy to back up things to (it looks like just another folder on your HD) and you can access the items stored there from anywhere.  Also I really like what MS has done with their new outlook.com and Skydrive interface.  It's very well done.  

 

I also have an external HD that I back up everything to as well.  Then on top of that I bought two 16 gb USB sticks that I use to back up all of the photos that I consider priceless, like pictures of my kid, vacations, etc.  I rotate the USB sticks between my home and work.  So I'll back up photos, then take the stick and put it in my desk at work, then bring the one from work home.  A couple months later, repeat the cycle.  That way if my house burns down or somebody hacks my Skydrive account, I've at least got photos stored somewhere.  I know it sounds paranoid, but being a prosecutor I've heard of too many people who have been burglarized and had their computer and external HD stolen, then lost all of their photos.  

[nozzleman]

I recently had a computer hard drive crash due to a Trojan virus and I lost not only all of my fire pictures but family pictures and am now trying to get them all back I am looking at the different options out there and for now I am going to go with an external hard drive.

[lawrencewhite111]

I never backed up any of my photos and when my laptop died I was fortunate to have the hard drive removed and transferred to a new lap top . All of my work is now backed up and saved on external hard drives now as well .

[nozzleman]

I was the same way but when my computer crashed I lost a lot of family pictures that I did not want to loose. The Fire pictures I could get back from here and facebook and twitter but not some of the other pictures.

[edburke]

Air Gapped.  That's the key word.  Online services are relatively reliable and offer remote access from just about anywhere, but a cheap stand-alone computer specifically for file storage-one that has never and will never be connected to the internet (and has a second, detachable hard drive) is probably the safest option.  Since you won't be processing on this computer, it doesn't have to have a high speed processor, large RAM or high end programs.  You could take an old computer you have lying around, reformat the hard drive and install Linux and be up and running in minutes.  I would recommend this in conjunction with an online service, not instead of, as having off-site storage is always a good thing. 

[Guest]

Hello,

 

I'm a little late to the party with this discussion but since my questions is close to this one I thought I might include it on this thread.

 

I was wondering if anyone has experience with a personal cloud storage device?  I'm not talking about a cloud service like Apples or any of the others

but instead one you own and controll yourself.  My understanding is that this is like a hard drive which you can access like a cloud service from anywhere.


The link below (hopefully it doesn't get stripped out is to a Western Digital one called My Cloud). 

WD My Cloud Device


The price appears to be good and I've had good results with my Western Digital hard drives.  Additionally it seems from my novice computer knowledge that

WD seems to use better components than most other mfg's hard drives, although after a purchase of another storage device Co. some magazines questioned

whether they would keep up the better components or go to cheaper components like the company they purchased used.


This interests me due to the security of controlling access to it (ie: Family records, work related files, that I want to keep out of reach of others but may need access

to away from home) no worries about the storage going away because the company closes its doors.  Plus it has more storage than I would need even in the near future. 


Now I'm not a computer whiz or even very knowledgeable except that I research what I buy and I can reasonably fumble my way thru working with or on electronics.

So now you know why I'm asking on here.


Thanks for any help in advance.


Kris

[fd2119]

I, too, am late to this party, but thought I'd chime in. I use a combination of a 4TB Western Digital MyCloud and a 1TB Dropbox subscription. Mostly, I use the Dropbox account for storage and sharing, and back it up to the WD MyCloud hard drive. I upload the pics into Dropbox, then generate a link and send that to my PIOs (my role is departmental photographer, a subset of the office of public information.)