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Author Topic: Amazon Cloud Drive for photo backup / archive?  (Read 4880 times)

jrp

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Amazon Cloud Drive for photo backup / archive?
« on: April 22, 2016, 10:13:00 am »

At present, I back up my photos onto external drives and since they are inexpensive I store some of them at friends' houses. This works, but is slightly tedious, and requires me to remember to take new backups around periodically.

I am toying with putting my pics on the cloud. Google has free unlimited storage but it reduces picture size / quality. There are whole PC backup solutions such as backblaze, but I am never sure how long such companies are going to be around.

The Amazon solution seems rudimentary, but it is the biggest provider of cloud storage (indeed a number of other cloud storage providers build their services on top of its infrastructure -- DropBox is starting to build its own). With Prime, the cost is about that of a 2Tb drive each year.

What have been others' experiences?
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Dinarius

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Re: Amazon Cloud Drive for photo backup / archive?
« Reply #1 on: April 30, 2016, 06:18:28 am »

I found this article the other day and found it very interesting.

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/amazon-unlimited-everything-cloud-storage/

Like you, I see Amazon (like Facebook) as one of the 800lb gorillas on the Internet block, and very unlikely to disappear any time soon.

So, I've opened an account. I chose this offering:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/drive/landing/photos/ref=nav_shopall_GW_US_I_D_ACD_GNO_UPS_413476

Yes, it's basic, but so is an external drive sitting on your desk.

The problem is the time it takes to upload the first time round - and I'm only uploading RAW files, for the following reasons.

I take the view that if a client comes looking for a file I shot, for example, 4 or five years ago;

1. They should have the file re-edited on the most up-to-date version of the software I'm currently using.

2. They should have to pay a fee for access to something I've been storing on their behalf for all that time.

3. RAW, obviously, takes up less space.

Ideally, I would like uncontested broadband (i.e. the upload speed being the same as the download speed) which mine isn't. So, I'm setting the computer to upload overnight and leaving it. But, I think that I'll only upload a few years first (I started shooting digital professionally in 2006) to see how the service goes. If I like it, I'll then upgrade my broadband, even if only for a month, to upload the rest.

I would be interested in the views of others.

Thanks.

D.
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Rado

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Re: Amazon Cloud Drive for photo backup / archive?
« Reply #2 on: May 03, 2016, 11:44:55 am »

I've signed up for the unlimited drive and I'm using a tool called rclone to synchronize my data/backups from a local NAS machine to the cloud drive. Seems to work pretty well, especially since Amazon doesn't touch the files so you can upload whatever you want.
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Dinarius

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Re: Amazon Cloud Drive for photo backup / archive?
« Reply #3 on: May 04, 2016, 06:36:51 am »

Thanks for that.

When I backup from my computer to my 10Tb LaCie Raid drive, I use a little app called SyncToy. It simply ensures that only new files are transferred from my computer to the LaCie, and nothing else is changed.

I am now in the process of transferring very large folders of image files to Amazon Cloud.

One problem is that, if I have to stop a transfer in mid-flow, there is no way, it seems, for Amazon Cloud Drive to "see" what has already been copied across from a folder on the LaCie and ONLY copy the remaining files; which is precisely what SyncToy does.

When I wrote to Amazon about this, they simply suggested that I see what's been copied already and only drag the remaining across. Dealing with such a huge volume of files, this is totally impractical for me.

Does rclone do this for you?

Can you stop and restart a transfer process using it, as I can with SyncToy?

Many thanks.

D.

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Rado

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Re: Amazon Cloud Drive for photo backup / archive?
« Reply #4 on: May 04, 2016, 08:12:58 am »

Yes, this is the task rclone was built for. Every time you run it, it will compare the local and the cloud drive and compute a list of actions so that only things that changed are copied over or deleted. There are two caveats

1) I don't think Amazon supports partial file transfers, meaning that if you abort the upload of a 1GB file, the next time it will have to upload the whole 1GB again
2) rclone is a command line tool. I'm comfortable with that (in fact that's why I chose it because it makes it easy to script things), you might not be. I haven't investigated if there's a GUI version.

Another approach you could try is to use an utility like ExpanDrive which allows you to mount various cloud storages as local drives. In that case you could presumably still use SyncToy the same way you do now.
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Dinarius

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Re: Amazon Cloud Drive for photo backup / archive?
« Reply #5 on: May 04, 2016, 08:44:29 am »

Yes, this is the task rclone was built for. Every time you run it, it will compare the local and the cloud drive and compute a list of actions so that only things that changed are copied over or deleted. There are two caveats

1) I don't think Amazon supports partial file transfers, meaning that if you abort the upload of a 1GB file, the next time it will have to upload the whole 1GB again
2) rclone is a command line tool. I'm comfortable with that (in fact that's why I chose it because it makes it easy to script things), you might not be. I haven't investigated if there's a GUI version.

Another approach you could try is to use an utility like ExpanDrive which allows you to mount various cloud storages as local drives. In that case you could presumably still use SyncToy the same way you do now.

Rado,

Thanks for such a comprehensive reply.

Yes, command line would probably be Dutch to me.

Will check out ExpanDrive.

Thanks again.

D.
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jwstl

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Re: Amazon Cloud Drive for photo backup / archive?
« Reply #6 on: May 04, 2016, 01:02:18 pm »


Another approach you could try is to use an utility like ExpanDrive which allows you to mount various cloud storages as local drives.

That's what I use on my Mac. I have a few different cloud storage system accounts and use ExpanDrive to show them on the desktop. I use an app called Folder Synchronizer to keep drives in sync.
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