# Looking for a good cloud storage solution



## Tight Knot (Mar 27, 2015)

Hi all,

I'm looking for a good cloud storage solution that will allow me to backup my computer and a few different external drives. I want to keep as much saved in the cloud as possible, without it being deleted if I delete a file or folder from either my computer (where I keep all my current photo work) or if I delete something from my external hard-drives to keep more space available there without having to constantly buy new externals.
I currently try to keep 2 copies of my images on separate hard-drives in case of a failure on one of them, and I don't wnat ot have to keep on buying new hard-drives every few months.

Any ideas for 7 - 8 terabytes of cloud storage?

Thanks in advance,

Bruce


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## ronlane (Mar 27, 2015)

Looking forward to reading the opinions for this thread Bruce.

On the lighter side though, I knew that photogs were different and that we like to photograph in clouding days but is it really necessary to store your clouds??? lol


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## Tight Knot (Mar 27, 2015)

ronlane said:


> Looking forward to reading the opinions for this thread Bruce.
> 
> On the lighter side though, I knew that photogs were different and that we like to photograph in clouding days but is it really necessary to store your clouds??? lol


Hi Ron,
Wouldn't that be amazing to be able to store clouds? Need a little diffusion here or some sun rays shining there.... Just float 'em on up. Wow!! Talk about saving for a rainy day, we'd be saving for a sunny day.


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## 407370 (Mar 27, 2015)

AMAZON has just introduced unlimited cloud storage for $60 per year. Job Done

Amazon Cloud Drive


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## The_Traveler (Mar 27, 2015)

Amazon has a relatively cheap cloud but the problem is the upload times.
Same with every service I've investigated.


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## Buckster (Mar 27, 2015)

I used CrashPlan for about 2 years, but was seriously disappointed when I tried to restore some desktop files that I didn't have redundantly backed up on other local drives after a crash.  It was then that I discovered that the service had failed miserably to do what it claimed in a BIG WAY, and the instructions from their techs were incredibly convoluted and, in the end, didn't work.

After re-reading the fine print on several cloud backup services output of that experience, I'm now trying BackBlaze.  So far, I like the ease and interface much better than CrashPlan's, and it appears to actually be backing up all my files the way I want, and is making verification of what's backed up so far easy to see (one of the things I always had trouble with using CrashPlan).

As an Amazon Prime member, I got very excited at the "unlimited" free photo backup service they rolled out a few months ago for us, and jumped right in.  Turned out to be WAY more trouble than it was worth, and I pulled my files from it and pulled the plug on the idea of trying to use it.

The new Amazon service at $60 per year looks far more promising, so far, but I haven't tried it yet.


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## Tight Knot (Mar 27, 2015)

Thanks so much everyone, the Amazon service does look good, and I'll also look into the BackBlaze (thanks Buster).
The funny thing is I looked into the Amazon service in the beginning of the week, but they didn't have that plan available the. It must be brand new (or I didn't look well enough).
I'll report back on what I use, and let you ll know how it works for me.

Thanks again, for all the input and have a great weekend.

Bruce


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## Tight Knot (Mar 27, 2015)

Tight Knot said:


> Thanks so much everyone, the Amazon service does look good, and I'll also look into the BackBlaze (thanks Buster).
> The funny thing is I looked into the Amazon service in the beginning of the week, but they didn't have that plan available the. It must be brand new (or I didn't look well enough).
> I'll report back on what I use, and let you ll know how it works for me.
> 
> ...


Looking into BackBlaze shows me a slight problem,
As per BackBlaze Online Backup of All Your Data Backblaze
Backblaze will keep versions of a file that changes for up to 30 days. However, Backblaze is not designed as an additional storage system when you run out of space. Backblaze mirrors your drive. If you delete your data, it will be deleted from Backblaze after 30 days.
This may create a problem. I need a system that will backup and store whatever data I upload indefinitely. If I want to delete something, I will do that manually. This way, I don't need to continuously buy new external hard-drives.


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## qleak (Mar 27, 2015)

407370 said:


> AMAZON has just introduced unlimited cloud storage for $60 per year. Job Done
> 
> Amazon Cloud Drive


Holy crap! I'm gonna have to try that. 



The_Traveler said:


> Amazon has a relatively cheap cloud but the problem is the upload times.
> Same with every service I've investigated.



Have you checked what your ISP upload cap is? 

When i lived in the country my upload was capped at 1 MBPS. Sometimes i had to upload videos to a school server that would take roughly 30 min to upload and another 20 to process. 

I now live in toledo and pay for double the upload 5 MBPS. I'm much happier with life. 

Of course if i upload from work the throttling is less.  Thank you academic freedom


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## Tight Knot (Mar 27, 2015)

qleak said:


> 407370 said:
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> > AMAZON has just introduced unlimited cloud storage for $60 per year. Job Done
> ...


Hi qleak,

Good point about the upload speed, I have no clue. Considering how much I want to upload, it may behoove me to check.


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## Tight Knot (Mar 27, 2015)

Hi all,

So, I've started on the Amazon service, but I'm finding that it's a little on the "dumb" side (or maybe that's me).
I can't upload in the background, and I can't upload folders. Only files. This doesn't help me, as I've got specific photography categories and customer files that can't be uploaded into one humongous folder. 
It looks like I'm going to have to carry on trying to figure this out.
Any other ideas floating around there?


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## The_Traveler (Mar 27, 2015)

Simple inexpensive backup system Photography Forum


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## Buckster (Mar 27, 2015)

Tight Knot said:


> Tight Knot said:
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> > Thanks so much everyone, the Amazon service does look good, and I'll also look into the BackBlaze (thanks Buster).
> ...


From my research, a service that offers that level of retention, that doesn't require the files to also live on the home machine, is going to cost considerably more.  Those kinds of "storage" solutions, as opposed to "backup" solutions, are covered by services like DropBox.

As an example, Dropbox allows up to 2GB for free.  Not enough for me (I have 15TB and growing).  For $9.99 per month, I could get up to 1TB of space for storage.  Still not enough for me.  Beyond that, I'd have to go with a Business account, which is UNLIMITED storage.  Cost: $15 per month per user, with a minimum of 5 users = $75 per month = $900 per year.  That's just more than I'm willing to pay.

At those kinds of prices, it's far less expensive to simply buy more hard drives.  The thing that the cloud backup/storage solutions offer to me that local drives don't is insurance against local catastrophe, and by that I mean theft, fire, tornado, etc. - something that takes out ALL my local hard drives in a way that's unrecoverable.  I could fill them and take them to my sister's, but the same tornado could wipe her place out as well, unlikely as that is.  Or I could pay to store them in a bank safety deposit box, sure.  Anything off-site from me though means that I don't have ready access to them when I want it, making it a pain in the behind to work with them.

I'm considering the idea that if I can find 4 other local friends and family who are interested in having unlimited storage, and are reliable enough to participate with me, I could set up the business account, and collect $15 from each of them per month to make it happen.  If I felt particularly entrepreneurial, I suppose I could charge them each $20 per month, get my storage for free, and pocket the extra $5 per month as an administrative fee (which likely violates the terms of service with the service, so you wouldn't want to try to go large scale with it and start trying to recruit hundreds of users and make a business of it).  Other than that, I just don't see it as a viable solution for me, personally.

If anyone knows of a reasonably priced unlimited "Storage" solution for a single user though, I would LOVE to find out about it, because that would be the ultimate solution for me.


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## qleak (Mar 27, 2015)

Tight Knot said:


> qleak said:
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You can usually deduce your max upload speed by visiting speedtest.net i think ookla or some crap like that owns it now.


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## Tight Knot (Mar 27, 2015)

qleak said:


> Tight Knot said:
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## Tight Knot (Mar 27, 2015)

Buckster said:


> Tight Knot said:
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Hey Buckster,

Sounds like a good idea trying to get a few friends together to share the Dropbox unlimited.
I looked into dropbox also, and had the same issue with size limit and expense.


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## Buckster (Mar 27, 2015)

Tight Knot said:


> Buckster said:
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Yeah, the problem with MY friends and family is that none of them need that much volume, so they can get by much cheaper.  They also don't have much in the way of stuff they really treasure - in most cases, it seems to be basically none.  If their whole machine burns up in a fire, they'd just get another one at Walmart and go right back to Facebook, email, and a few games, and start over without much hand-wringing at all.  Their photos are still on Facebook and Flickr.


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## qleak (Mar 27, 2015)

Tight Knot said:


> qleak said:
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6 mbps  Not bad at all!


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## Buckster (Mar 27, 2015)

qleak said:


> Tight Knot said:
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Yeah, that's almost twice my UL.


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## The_Traveler (Mar 27, 2015)

It's not the max speed of your upload, it's what the upload service will allow.
And that's difficult to know in advance.


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## Buckster (Mar 27, 2015)

The_Traveler said:


> It's not the max speed of your upload, it's what the upload service will allow.
> And that's difficult to know in advance.


If you mean volume per month, or cap, it's actually easy - just ask them.  I did, and mine is unlimited both up and down with Charter.


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## The_Traveler (Mar 27, 2015)

the actual upload speed  is highly dependent on lots of factors, speed allowed by one's provider, the physical distance to where it gets off the web, number of hops, size of file, etc.

I have a need to know that my pictures are safe and where they are when it gets dark.


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## Buckster (Mar 27, 2015)

The_Traveler said:


> the actual upload speed  is highly dependent on lots of factors, speed allowed by one's provider, the physical distance to where it gets off the web, number of hops, size of file, etc.
> 
> I have a need to know that my pictures are safe and where they are when it gets dark.


Given that, what's your recommendation?


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## The_Traveler (Mar 27, 2015)

I have no recommendation.
I don't want to take the time to experiment with the cloud when my current system works well, particularly given the problem of restoring from the cloud.
As it is, if my main data drive goes, I can swap in any of the two duplicates in my house and be up and running in ten minutes.
The system backs up my images every time I exit LR and my workflow is always LR->PS->LR
A full data backup is done every day at 4:30 so I have 2 mirrors on site. 
I always use raw files so I always have the originals if, by some odd happenstance the edited file on my main drive gets blown up.
If the file gets corrupted on either of the backups, it gets overwritten.

So I feel secure and cozy and can, if I desire, hug my photos before I go to sleep.


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## Buckster (Mar 27, 2015)

The_Traveler said:


> I have no recommendation.
> I don't want to take the time to experiment with the cloud when my current system works well, particularly given the problem of restoring from the cloud.
> As it is, if my main data drive goes, I can swap in any of the two duplicates in my house and be up and running in ten minutes.
> The system backs up my images every time I exit LR and my workflow is always LR->PS->LR
> ...


Yeah, I've got virtually the same thing going on locally.  So, locally, I'm VERY covered.

My safety level goal is one step beyond that however, and it is the ability to restore in the case of TOTAL catastrophic LOCAL failure of ALL my hard drives including ALL backups.  When I say TOTAL catastrophic failure of ALL my hard drives including ALL backups, I'm talking about an event like a fire, tornado, mega-theft, etc.

The OP's goal appears to be that PLUS a LOT of additional off-site storage, which I also wouldn't mind having.


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