irukandji
Newbie
Hello,
I currently keep all my photographs on an external hard drive (I use Lightroom). I have these backed up on another external drive, which I fairly frequently. To do this, I use Carbon Copy Cloner which is excellent because it recognizes when I plug in both hard drives and it will only update files which have been modified (It is a dream of a program, too bad they don't have Windows version).
I also have another hard drive which I update every 6 months or so, which I have off site using the same technique.
At this point, I would like to use an online storage option. I use Dropbox for my daily files (I used it throughout school with great success) and I've been considering purchasing 1TB from Dropbox and using it as my photo backup/remote access.
Does anyone have any experience/advice using Dropbox as a photo storage? Or have any other suggestions for online storage?
As always, thanks!
-Greg
I currently keep all my photographs on an external hard drive (I use Lightroom). I have these backed up on another external drive, which I fairly frequently. To do this, I use Carbon Copy Cloner which is excellent because it recognizes when I plug in both hard drives and it will only update files which have been modified (It is a dream of a program, too bad they don't have Windows version).
I also have another hard drive which I update every 6 months or so, which I have off site using the same technique.
At this point, I would like to use an online storage option. I use Dropbox for my daily files (I used it throughout school with great success) and I've been considering purchasing 1TB from Dropbox and using it as my photo backup/remote access.
Does anyone have any experience/advice using Dropbox as a photo storage? Or have any other suggestions for online storage?
As always, thanks!
-Greg
JayC
5 kids,3 dogs,only 1 wife
I am seeking advice/answers to online storage as well. I await all the answers.
willie_901
Veteran
Amazon Prime subscribers in the US enjoy unlimited photo storage... including TIFFS. The total Amazon Prime cost is less than Dropbox's 1 TB upgrade.
rscheffler
Well-known
I have limited experience with Dropbox, but I have successfully used it for creating galleries and image delivery for clients.
I think it depends on what you expect from such a service. Do you want something whereby you can visually browse images in galleries, or is a simple structure of folders containing files without image preview sufficient?
An option could be Flickr as they're now allowing 1TB of free storage, IIRC. And you can browse and organize images visually. While it's set up as a social site with the ability to share, you can set privacy settings to prevent others from seeing your images.
Photoshelter is a more 'pro oriented' version of Flickr that will allow online commerce, etc. But it also has a lot of tools for storage and organization. The price reflects certain aspects beyond simple storage.
Google Drive is a pretty good consumer solution for image uploads and storage. They give you 15GB free per account (you can sign up for as many as you want, it seems). Otherwise you can buy 100GB for $24/yr or 1TB for $120/yr.
Then there is something like Amazon Web Services' S3 (Simple Storage Service). This is basically a pay as you go, pay for what you use, FTP-like service. http://aws.amazon.com
You can interface with it using their online console or by any FTP app that supports S3 functionality.
IMO, advantages and disadvantages of each:
Flickr:
Pros:1TB free. The social aspect. Decent functionality. Ability to caption and add other metadata tags.
Cons: Accessing/downloading large quantities of files (i.e. to recover those lost locally) is slow. IIRC, it's pretty much one by one download. It's not a system really designed for getting stuff off the site and back onto your hard drive (based on the last time I looked a while ago... things may be different now?).
There's also the need to police their terms of use in regards to access by 3rd party partners and other 'behind the scenes' privacy details. There has been some uncertainty about what Yahoo! plans to do with Flickr...
Google Drive:
Price is OK and it's easy to set up directories of images and view them as galleries. Options are available for sharing files/galleries with others who don't require a Google account to do so. On the downside, the service is occasionally a bit flaky - i.e. galleries don't display properly or clicking on a thumbnail doesn't show a preview or allow access from the public side of shared galleries. If there is too much download traffic on the public side, access will be suspended for ~ one day. Logged into your account, you're able to batch download 2GB at a time, though I'm not sure if there is a daily limit, etc. Huge directories (500+ images) are problematic. Better to break things down into more manageable sizes. Google should be around a long time, though they have the habit of abandoning, or drastically changing services.
S3:
Pay as you go. Uploads are free but there are monthly costs for total data on the service, as well as for traffic accessing the files and downloads: http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ You can use S3 for file hosting (i.e. posting on forums, in your own website, etc.), though you will pay for all traffic accessing such linked files, which can add up. As an example regarding storage, I have probably around 200GB on S3 at the moment and am paying just over $7/month. While a couple paid 100GB Google Drive accounts would be cheaper, I like the simplicity of S3 and the ability to upload and manage it directly via ftp. BTW, Amazon constantly reduces S3 storage costs. It's about 1/3 of what it cost ~4 years ago, though download bandwidth costs seem to have remained fairly constant. For truly longterm archiving, Amazon also have a cheaper and much slower (to recover files) service called Glacier. From S3 I can quickly and easily download as many or as few files as I want, without any traffic limits. But downloading files is also the most expensive aspect of S3... Many, many cloud storage services, web sites and other online services are built on Amazon's Web Services. Amazon caters to corporate/business users (but small fish like us are equally welcome), which means they're in it for the long haul where reliability and availability is highly critical. They're not likely to arbitrarily change significant aspects of the service on a whim.
My current cloud implementation is to backup final edited selects from everything I shoot - these are the final processed files - to both S3 and Google Drive. I don't currently back up original RAWs, PSD working files, etc., unless they are of critical value. Cloud storage is for me a 'last resort' backup in case of disaster relating to my multiple physical backups. It's also useful for accessing files while away from home. Maybe not as relevant to you, but handy when a 'client' (a paying one, or a relative, etc.) can't find certain images but needs them ASAP.
There are certainly many cloud storage options out there and the above aren't necessarily the best solutions for everyone. You'll definitely want to compare them against Dropbox.
One thing I would also strongly recommend is to consider longterm viability of such services. As mentioned, there are many players out there... How many will still be around in 2, 5 or 10 years? This is where shopping strictly based on price could be a problem. Pay a little more for something like S3, but in exchange receive peace of mind that the service won't suddenly disappear with all of your images into the ether. For an example of this, look up Digital Railroad...
I think it depends on what you expect from such a service. Do you want something whereby you can visually browse images in galleries, or is a simple structure of folders containing files without image preview sufficient?
An option could be Flickr as they're now allowing 1TB of free storage, IIRC. And you can browse and organize images visually. While it's set up as a social site with the ability to share, you can set privacy settings to prevent others from seeing your images.
Photoshelter is a more 'pro oriented' version of Flickr that will allow online commerce, etc. But it also has a lot of tools for storage and organization. The price reflects certain aspects beyond simple storage.
Google Drive is a pretty good consumer solution for image uploads and storage. They give you 15GB free per account (you can sign up for as many as you want, it seems). Otherwise you can buy 100GB for $24/yr or 1TB for $120/yr.
Then there is something like Amazon Web Services' S3 (Simple Storage Service). This is basically a pay as you go, pay for what you use, FTP-like service. http://aws.amazon.com
You can interface with it using their online console or by any FTP app that supports S3 functionality.
IMO, advantages and disadvantages of each:
Flickr:
Pros:1TB free. The social aspect. Decent functionality. Ability to caption and add other metadata tags.
Cons: Accessing/downloading large quantities of files (i.e. to recover those lost locally) is slow. IIRC, it's pretty much one by one download. It's not a system really designed for getting stuff off the site and back onto your hard drive (based on the last time I looked a while ago... things may be different now?).
There's also the need to police their terms of use in regards to access by 3rd party partners and other 'behind the scenes' privacy details. There has been some uncertainty about what Yahoo! plans to do with Flickr...
Google Drive:
Price is OK and it's easy to set up directories of images and view them as galleries. Options are available for sharing files/galleries with others who don't require a Google account to do so. On the downside, the service is occasionally a bit flaky - i.e. galleries don't display properly or clicking on a thumbnail doesn't show a preview or allow access from the public side of shared galleries. If there is too much download traffic on the public side, access will be suspended for ~ one day. Logged into your account, you're able to batch download 2GB at a time, though I'm not sure if there is a daily limit, etc. Huge directories (500+ images) are problematic. Better to break things down into more manageable sizes. Google should be around a long time, though they have the habit of abandoning, or drastically changing services.
S3:
Pay as you go. Uploads are free but there are monthly costs for total data on the service, as well as for traffic accessing the files and downloads: http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/ You can use S3 for file hosting (i.e. posting on forums, in your own website, etc.), though you will pay for all traffic accessing such linked files, which can add up. As an example regarding storage, I have probably around 200GB on S3 at the moment and am paying just over $7/month. While a couple paid 100GB Google Drive accounts would be cheaper, I like the simplicity of S3 and the ability to upload and manage it directly via ftp. BTW, Amazon constantly reduces S3 storage costs. It's about 1/3 of what it cost ~4 years ago, though download bandwidth costs seem to have remained fairly constant. For truly longterm archiving, Amazon also have a cheaper and much slower (to recover files) service called Glacier. From S3 I can quickly and easily download as many or as few files as I want, without any traffic limits. But downloading files is also the most expensive aspect of S3... Many, many cloud storage services, web sites and other online services are built on Amazon's Web Services. Amazon caters to corporate/business users (but small fish like us are equally welcome), which means they're in it for the long haul where reliability and availability is highly critical. They're not likely to arbitrarily change significant aspects of the service on a whim.
My current cloud implementation is to backup final edited selects from everything I shoot - these are the final processed files - to both S3 and Google Drive. I don't currently back up original RAWs, PSD working files, etc., unless they are of critical value. Cloud storage is for me a 'last resort' backup in case of disaster relating to my multiple physical backups. It's also useful for accessing files while away from home. Maybe not as relevant to you, but handy when a 'client' (a paying one, or a relative, etc.) can't find certain images but needs them ASAP.
There are certainly many cloud storage options out there and the above aren't necessarily the best solutions for everyone. You'll definitely want to compare them against Dropbox.
One thing I would also strongly recommend is to consider longterm viability of such services. As mentioned, there are many players out there... How many will still be around in 2, 5 or 10 years? This is where shopping strictly based on price could be a problem. Pay a little more for something like S3, but in exchange receive peace of mind that the service won't suddenly disappear with all of your images into the ether. For an example of this, look up Digital Railroad...
kxl
Social Documentary
If you just need file back up and security, and don't need to share files with others, Carbonite and Crashplan offer unlimited storage and are probably the two most popular options for cloud backup. If you need to share files via a link, then you'd have to explore other options.
Jamie Pillers
Skeptic
I have what I guess is a parallel concern. Is the storage media used by these cloud providers secure and for how long. Have they discovered something un-hackable? And lasts longer than a beefy drive sitting here on my desk? I don't yet get what's attractive about cloud storage. If there was some super guarantee that my data would be protected from corruption and theft in perpetuity, then… maybe.
mdarnton
Well-known
My system is relatively unsophisticated: I picked a company I thought would be in business for a while (Microsoft), paid for their OneDrive storage, and I put everything there, in their designated drive on my computer.
I file by year and months within that, because all my work is related more to timeline than anything else, and I need to find it by date. I also have special directories in the OneDrive directory that are for special recurring jobs I usually do that I need to keep going back to. Then I work directly out of the OneDrive folder--everything is backed up as soon as I use it, and I have several other computers running mirrors of the OneDrive directory so I can do the same work anywhere I have a computer--I can even find stuff on my cell phone if I need to. All of my photos are everywhere. That's very convenient when someone from work emails me on Sunday needing a picture NOW for a client.
At the end of each year, allowing a month or so for the dust to settle, I copy that year off to a couple of hard drives that I never otherwise touch, one at work, one at home.
It's not perfect, but it works for me.
I have had several attractive offers from services I don't know. I figure the big ones know their jobs and won't disappear overnight. Anything can be hacked, so I don't stay awake at night worrying about that. Dropbox would be fine for me, also, and there are others. I'm really surprised at how cheap online storage has become. The biggest bad thing is how long the initial upload of everything took. I hope I never need to change services!
I file by year and months within that, because all my work is related more to timeline than anything else, and I need to find it by date. I also have special directories in the OneDrive directory that are for special recurring jobs I usually do that I need to keep going back to. Then I work directly out of the OneDrive folder--everything is backed up as soon as I use it, and I have several other computers running mirrors of the OneDrive directory so I can do the same work anywhere I have a computer--I can even find stuff on my cell phone if I need to. All of my photos are everywhere. That's very convenient when someone from work emails me on Sunday needing a picture NOW for a client.
At the end of each year, allowing a month or so for the dust to settle, I copy that year off to a couple of hard drives that I never otherwise touch, one at work, one at home.
It's not perfect, but it works for me.
I have had several attractive offers from services I don't know. I figure the big ones know their jobs and won't disappear overnight. Anything can be hacked, so I don't stay awake at night worrying about that. Dropbox would be fine for me, also, and there are others. I'm really surprised at how cheap online storage has become. The biggest bad thing is how long the initial upload of everything took. I hope I never need to change services!
View Range
Well-known
You might consider your own cloud, such as Connected Data's Transporter series. After buying the hardware, there is no additional cost for use. It is totally under your control, including file sharing. The Transporter can be located remotely.
willie_901
Veteran
What's attractive is the convenience and safety. Physical rotation of physical storage from your home/studio to a bank safety deposit box on a weekly basis is un-hackable and provides disaster recovery. But you have to be disciplined about going to the bank every week without fail.
Cloud storage is convenient. There will be no "super guarantee" for data storage or anything else in life. Your phrase "something un-hackable" is interesting since the U.S. government is formally complaining Apple and Google's newest mobile encryption technology degrades national security. This technology is scalable to the cloud. Besides, how much trouble would somebody go to to steal your personal photos? What would the payoff be for the bad guys?
Cloud data is backed up and the major providers operate in a professional secure environment. Amazon is one example. Besides their own e-commerce business, Amazon's software and hardware infrastructure is the engine behind other large e-commerce web sites. Amazon charges a lot of money for these services. If Amazon lost corporate customer data due to corruption or security breaches, they would be in deep trouble.
All institutional and commercial data is in the cloud. The term cloud is just marketing terminology for remote storage that is accessible via the internet. Organizations with such more at risk than any single photographer use cloud storage for cost reduction and efficiency (convenience). Some of these organizations are both risk adverse and regulated by governmental agencies.
Cloud storage failures are notable for the same reason airline disasters are notable. Both are rare and tragic. Both make good news stories.