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Author Topic: Best Cloud Storage provider for emergency backup?  (Read 2223 times)

The View

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Best Cloud Storage provider for emergency backup?
« on: March 10, 2014, 03:33:59 pm »

We all have our two back-up copies of important images.

But what happens in a case of fire, flood, or earthquake. Our back-up drives would die just like our main computers.

Creating an additional back-up through cloud services is a good option.


Here's a link to a good article on livehacker: http://lifehacker.com/five-best-cloud-storage-providers-614393607

Looks like those are their four recommendations:

1. Dropbox:     $ 200.00 per year for 200 Gb, $ 100.00/year for 100Gb

2. Google Drive: $ 60.00/year for 100 Gb, $120.00/year for 200Gb.

Sugarsync, and  $100.00/year for 100Gb, $250.00/year for 250 Gb.

Bitcasa: $ 85.00/year for 1000Gb ( 1 Terabyte).

(Microsoft's Skydrive is also mentioned, but I'm on a Mac).

Looking at the voting chart (never trust a statistic sheet you haven't cooked yourself) Dropbox comes out on top.


Now my question to you all:

Have you used cloud services for backup, and what was your experience? What would you recommend?
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Farmer

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Re: Best Cloud Storage provider for emergency backup?
« Reply #1 on: March 10, 2014, 04:01:08 pm »

Crashplan.

It's much cheaper for large storage and includes up to 1TB of "seeded" storage (i.e. they send you a hard drive, you fill it, return it, they load it up).  Thereafter you use the application to control your backups.

I also use Dropbox, but not for mass cloud storage.
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Phil Brown

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Re: Best Cloud Storage provider for emergency backup?
« Reply #2 on: March 10, 2014, 04:36:19 pm »

As Farmer indicates, cloud backup is fairly impractical IMHO for large storage without swapping drives. You could never backup or restore a Terabyte over the Internet as it would never complete (at least not in Australia). Cheapest solution is to have three backup drives and send one to a different location like worksite (or give a relative a pile of postbags) and next month send the next one and have the first one come back. So you always have two separate backups on site and one offsite. I also have a backup NAS in another part of the block I am in, but even that is very slow compared to an attached drive.
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Farmer

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Re: Best Cloud Storage provider for emergency backup?
« Reply #3 on: March 10, 2014, 05:02:31 pm »

Bob - note that Crashplan's "seed" service is available in Australia (it's $165- as a one-off over an above subscription fees).  It's the same to do a "seeded" recovery.

Their backup method includes compression, so you get some advantage there, too.

It still may not be enough, but it's a lot better than anything else I've come across and more useful certainly than Dropbox or the like here.  It then live updates as you change things going forward.

For multi-TB data storage you're really better off doing as Bob suggests and swapping with a friend or a work location etc is what I've done for a long time (in addition to my Crashplan account now).
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Phil Brown

The View

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Re: Best Cloud Storage provider for emergency backup?
« Reply #4 on: March 10, 2014, 06:32:05 pm »

Instead of sending a hard drive I could as well rent a strong box and put it there myself. This way it would be easier to update.

This would be an option for RAW files.

For completed works one could store flattened TIFF files in a cloud - the file sizes would be moderate, about 120 MB per file.

Unfortunately, due to internet provider having secured monopolies - having divided up areas like Chicago gangsters in the 1930's - we have much lower internet speeds than Europe and part of Asia. I see this is a problem for cloud storage.
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Some Guy

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Re: Best Cloud Storage provider for emergency backup?
« Reply #5 on: March 10, 2014, 07:39:23 pm »

Just get another hard drive and leave it with someone.  I use about 3 USB hard drives to back stuff up onto.

Using a cloud for storage of some 400 MB or more layered TIFF out of my 36 megapixel camera is a long wait to upload and download one file.  My DSL isn't exactly fast, and somewhat sketchy with some large downloads I get (4.7 GB maps) for my Garmin GPS that takes 5-6 hours for one file to come down the copper wire - if it doesn't hiccup and crash out and restart again.  I heard the past night that the USA internet speed is 31st in the world in terms of speed (We're on the slow side!).  Some countries like South Korea are moving into 5G cellular service, and we're still trying to get 4G running well, plus it cost's like mad too with Verizon family plan and the cellular data.  Could buy a new car for the monthly cellular expense alone.

Don't forget Kodak tried the cloud thing way back in 2000 called PictureShare/EasyShare or something (formerly it was Ofoto.).  Their cloud idea went bye-bye a few years back.  As camera file sizes continue to grow, the internet transfer can get pricey to keep up - if they can.  Kodak could have raised their cloud storage price to $500 per year, but then there would be howls of screams from people about "Kodak is holding my images for a king's ransom to get them back from their servers!"  Best they just shut it down and told their 60 million users to "Get them before they are gone."  Stuff has a finite lifetime as it is.

SG
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Lightsmith

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Re: Best Cloud Storage provider for emergency backup?
« Reply #7 on: March 13, 2014, 07:26:13 pm »

We backup to a 4-drive RAID 5 NAS box and back it up in turn to a two drive RAID 1 NAS box which we take to our neighbors house. In the event of a fire and we are home we can grab the primary NAS and have everything. When we are away traveling the two NAS boxes go to two of our neighbors houses.

Backing up to an internet web server using https is at 1/100 the speed of moving data on the 1GB Ethernet and I have 100% control of the data and I do not have to separate out what I want to share with the fed agencies and their 2 million subcontractors and Google et al in the way of our personal data.

In terms of who do you trust it is definitely not Google or Yahoo or the federal, state, or local government agencies and their workers who have not accountability or even visibility.
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