Offsite/online date storage

[Chris Kelly]

As my volume of date grows, and my need to backup data grows along with it, I thought I'd ask those that shoot a good deal if they do any offsite date storage and who they use. There's a ~2 year old thread here that addresses some of this issue, but 2 years in the world of computing is like dog years to us humans.

So, what say you as far as using an online data storage system for one of your backups, and who do you use or recommend?

[Daniel Buck]

I backup my print files (not that many), I upload them to a folder that is secured and guaranteed to be backed up by my host.

There's only one draw back to saving things online that I can see, it could take a very long time to upload, if you have alot of files, depending on your connection.

[John Thawley]

I think if you want to go the online route, Photoshelter is probably the best value. And, you can actually send them a hard drive and for $50, they'll handle the transfer.

Locally, the Drobo system seems to be the hot ticket. Sykes has gone that route... maybe he'll chime in.

I'm looking at 7 external Lacies lined up ... 5TB in all... and to be honest, that's a whole lot of icons on your desktop and a little hard on the brain trying to remember what each drive has on it... to a point. I'm thinkng there's a couple of Drobos in my future. The thing that makes it so attractive is having a single drive icon representing 4tb (3tb usuable) of storage.

JT

[Chris Kelly]

I think if you want to go the online route, Photoshelter is probably the best value. And, you can actually send them a hard drive and for $50, they'll handle the transfer.

Locally, the Drobo system seems to be the hot ticket. Sykes has gone that route... maybe he'll chime in.

I'm looking at 7 external Lacies lined up ... 5TB in all... and to be honest, that's a whole lot of icons on your desktop and a little hard on the brain trying to remember what each drive has on it... to a point. I'm thinkng there's a couple of Drobos in my future. The thing that makes it so attractive is having a single drive icon representing 4tb (3tb usuable) of storage.

JT

I have 5 Lacie externals, 500GB each, 1 for each year's worth of photos (not setup as any type of array). This is my long term archive solution. With the rapid advance of technology, I'm not sure if there's a bullet proof solution yet, so I'm sorting through options now.

Thanks for the comments so far.

[Bill Jurasz]

Smugmug just introduced a "Vault" service that looks interesting. You can upload any type of file. There are upload fees, download fees, and monthly recurring fees. I'm not sure how it compares to Photo Shelter in terms of price.

I am very lacking in the backup department. I have a second drive here, which is at least something. But that's only one backup device. And it resides in the house, so if the house burns I lose it all. Thankfully I don't make a living off those files.

However, if I did, I would seriously consider any in-house solution deficient due to fire and theft issues, and only consider offsite backups. Both Smugmug and Photoshelter do this, and do so at multiple locations. Besides, who honestly wants to manage their own RAID system, running diagnostics, swapping out old drives for new, etc. Too much hassle for me.

[E. John Thawley III]

Besides, who honestly wants to manage their own RAID system, running diagnostics, swapping out old drives for new, etc. Too much hassle for me.
I've got an eSATA RAID with room for 5 drives that I'll let go reasonably. Right now its got 4-250gig drives.

Thawley - never again

[John Thawley]

Besides, who honestly wants to manage their own RAID system, running diagnostics, swapping out old drives for new, etc. Too much hassle for me.

This is where the DROBO is supposed to be a dream. All of that is built into the box. You just slot in your own drives and plug it in.

http://www.drobo.com/Products/drobo.html

[E. John Thawley III]

A RAID is a RAID. More than one drive connected by software and magic to act as one big drive.

When the magic stops, so does the RAID.

[Todd Corzett]

A RAID is a RAID. More than one drive connected by software and magic to act as one big drive.
I'm not a fan of software RAIDs (they put more load on your CPU), but there are also hardware RAIDs.

When the magic stops, so does the RAID.
While it's not all magic, JT3 does bring up a good point... a RAID only protects against DRIVE FAILURE. A RAID doesn't protect against viruses, OS/file structure issues, fire, thieft, etc. RAIDs (when configured properly) are great to take care of the random drive failures.

So my solution for off-site storage is still DVDs. I've not really considered the online storage solutions for lots of photos (talking terabytes worth) because of: 1) Cost for space and upload/download fees. 2) Reliability of the backup company (if they go out of business, where's your data then?). 3) Time to back-up/restore (I wouldn't really want to spend days downloading images after a crash - not that DVDs would be fast).

-Todd...

[David Adolphus]

I'm in the multiple drives camp, but I just had one fail (Maxtor 320gb, 18 months old). Not an untypical rate of failure.

Archival Blu-Ray makes a lot of sense to me, but the cost of entry is very high. None of this is man-readable, of course. The ideal solution would be to be able to print to transparency.

www.filesavr.com offers 250gb free lifetime online, no restrictions. Never hurts to have an extra copy of important stuff around.

[Bill Jurasz]

Regarding filesavr.com: "The use of this service to upload copyrighted or illegal material is not allowed"

[David Adolphus]

That would be in the context of violations of copyright. Any image you take is held to be copyrighted.

[Justin Miller]

smugmug allows your to upload ,Raw and other image types and you can use the api tools to download them.

[Gary Grant]

I've only just begun to deal with storage issues. I've got my files stored on an external hard drive and on jungledisk. JD is part of Amazon, so I figure they aren't going anywhere. The annual fee is cheap (about $20 If memory serves) and monthly upload fees have only cost me a couple of bucks.

[Chris Kelly]

I've only just begun to deal with storage issues. I've got my files stored on an external hard drive and on jungledisk. JD is part of Amazon, so I figure they aren't going anywhere. The annual fee is cheap (about $20 If memory serves) and monthly upload fees have only cost me a couple of bucks.

Just went to the site. $.15 GB/mo is not very cheap at all. At that rate 500GB will run $900/yr.

Did I miss something in the translation?

[Bill Jurasz]

I once ran the numbers on the Smugmug Vault, which uses the Amazon service but bundles it with Smugmug galleries (pretty slick in my opinion). For 100G of storage, including the upload fee but not any download fees, ran about $295 for the year. $22 per month to store 100G, and a one-time fee of $30 to transfer 100G in the first place. The Smugmug Vault fees are slightly higher than using JD directly because SM wants to make a profit and SM's Vault introduces new feaures on top of JD.

To some its worth the cost. You're not maintaining your own disks, swapping out before they fail, maintaining off-site copies, etc. Don't forget JD mirrors your data to multiple geographical disperse locations. You're not really buying 500GB of storage, but 500GB times the number of places it gets mirrored. It all depends on how much data safety you happen to need. For me having a single back-up drive at home is enough safety, even though that really opens me up to a lot of potential problems. For others that is totally insufficient, and managing off-site copies on their own is more hassle than its worth.

[Gary Grant]

Chris, I guess I've been slow on uploading, so it has only been costing me a couple of bucks a month.