Cloud storage

[mark hansen]

As I said before, I take LOTS of pictures. My kids gave me a nice book called "Thousands of pictures, Now what?" (they changed it to 10 of thousands of Pictures).

Lots of good ideas and informaiton regarding browser type programs and database type programs (with my volume of photos I probably should have a database)

anyway, I'm doing most of the ideas he mentioned two hard drivers, don't delete the pictures on the card until you have two copies (working drive and back up drive.

He mentions also storing off site, like in the cloud. I'm assuming many out there use the cloud--- can you offer any advice. I'm approaching 1 GB and its going up fast.

Thanks,
Mark

[Dave McElderry]

Here's an article that was very useful to me when I was choosing an online backup solution a few months ago. There's detailed information about each offering. There are more things to consider than most people would think about, and what makes the most sense for one person won't for another.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2288745,00.asp

[TreeTopsRanch]

Dave's PCmag article is great for comparing cloud sites but most, or all, of those are not free and charge enough per year to equal the purchase of a new hard drive each year.

I think Google will let you store several gigs free. But how secure is that? I'm not a cloud guy and I don't really trust my stuff on somebody's website. Some day you will see news articles about some hacker somewhere getting into a cloud site and doing damage or stealing stuff. I suspect it is already being done.

[Peru]

You may want to explore the possibility of having a relative or friend who lives near you store a hard drive or drives of your backups.

[TreeTopsRanch]

That's good advice.

[Dave McElderry]

You may want to explore the possibility of having a relative or friend who lives near you store a hard drive or drives of your backups.

While that would certainly work, I think you'd soon find that keeping your offsite backup current would become a chore. It sounds like you take a lot of pictures, and a solution which automatically updates your backup might be worth spending some money on. Regarding the security issue, we do tend to take chances as a tradeoff for convenience. It's a personal decision. By the way, 1GB isn't much storage space. Even the smallest packages will accomodate many times that amount.

[mark hansen]

Thanks everyone for the insight. Tough decision to make. I appreciate your input.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

.....or there is always the NAS option which one can implement in increments to spread the set up costs. For me, cloud storage is completely out of the question as our internet telecoms service is not synchronous so, whilst my download speed is reasonable, the available upload speed is only 300Kbps.

In my case I have a Synology DS412+ with RAID5 which in turn backs up to a Synology DS212j which is straight JBOD. Both devices are CAT5e cabled via a gigabit switch.

I started with the DS212j with two WD20EARX drives configured in JBOD form to begin the process of moving all videos, photos, music, data etc. to that device. Then, later when funds permitted, I bought the four bay device and installed into it an initial three WD2002FAEX drives that I took out of our existing PCs (they became available/free from use once the initial data migration to the DS212j was complete). Again, when funds permit or our storage demands increase, I can add another drive and the DS412+ unit and it will will dynamically reconfigure.

http://www.synology.com/products/index.php or as an alternative
http://web.qnap.com/Products.asp

Yes, there is a problem if my house burns down and that is the next step in the process to work on but, until then, I have a working grandfather/father/son automated backup regime using Macrium Reflect software.

PS. Another plus - both units are DLNA capable so I can stream videos/music/photos around the house to DLNA compatible devices (TVs, Squeezebox attached to my stereo....).