Cloud storage

[AMMO]

As I will hopefully be traveling around quite a bit I was thinking of how to backup my computer. I have just ordered a 1TB external hard drive so I can use Time Machine on my MacBook Pro. The MBP has a 500GB SSD hard drive which is not enough to store all my photos of which there are two copies on 2 500GB external hard drives. One remains in the UK, the other one comes with me on my travels if I need to work on images.

 

As a friend fell asleep on a train once in Italy and woke up to find his laptop and his backup hard drive nicked, losing all his images I am a bit wary of using just an external hard drive to store new images I take on my travels.

 

I was thinking of cloud storage so I can store new work plus all the copies of my old work too. A quick Google brings this up here

 

Anyone know anything about this that can advise?

[Jonathan Kay]

Will you be editing and culling as you go or do you want to back up everything you take?

 

How about all of:

* Dropbox

* Most valuable images on cards kept separately from camera and laptop

* Hard drive but kept apart from the laptop whenever possible

* Copies left with friends?

 

Jonathan

[Roger Ford]

Smugmug is good for photos. It's not free but allows unlimited storage - so if you've got 100s of gigabytes of images it might work out cheaper than many of the general purpose offerings.

 

[FramerateUK]

After an overclocking attempt went wrong about 10 years ago and left me with a corrupted hard drive table, I got a little over the top with backing up my data and I've tried a few approaches over the years.

 

I used to use a NAS drive at home as a backup system, then uses it as the main storage so that the data was accessible to all my computers in the house (but kept backups on the hard drive of the main pc).

 

I dumped the NAS drive a year or so ago because it was too slow, and now I work like this:

 

1. Cloud Storage

I have a 100GB Google Drive plan which is enough to store all my documents, photo albums and work. In fact, I'm using about 50GB of it so there's plenty spare. Due to the way Google Drive works, this is automatically synced across all the connected devices. So my desktop, laptop and work PC all have copies of this data. You could easily use dropbox or another service for this. But I used Google Docs before it became Google Drive, and it integrates really well with my Android phone.

 

2. Backup Drive

For larger data, ie, home movies, music, music recordings (cubase ect) - mainly stuff that doesn't change often, I keep the working copy on my desktop, and periodically I make a backup to a USB drive that I keep at work. When I do this backup, I also put all the Google Drive data on here too, just in case. I only do this every few months since the data is fairly static. It's good to keep this sort of backup off site in case anything happens at home. My backup drive is 2TB and that's plenty at the moment. Ideally though I'd like another drive so that I have incremental backups.

 

3. Make use of free cloud services

All my music lives on Google Music. You can download your entire library if you need to, and you can access it from anywhere. Again, I use an Android phone so this is perfect for me, but I'm sure other services do exist.

 

4. System backups

Not something I tend to do anymore, but I've used Time Machine on the Mac with good success, even if it does tend to slow the system down a little. I've used Genie Timeline on the PC and that seemed to work well too, though I can't comment on how easy it is to restore since I didn't need to use it.

 

The bottom line is you can make it as simple or as complicated as you want. Sounds like you're on the right track though, adding a cloud solution would definitely help keep your data safe. Best not leave your laptop out on a train while you sleep though! If you're concerned about people being able to access your data if you laptop is stolen you may want to consider some data encryption (since you don't want someone who stole your laptop to have access to your cloud data!). You can encrypt a drive, file or an entire machine. If can even force passwords before loading the OS. I would recommend this if you're travelling a lot. I would have recommended TruCrypt but it seems to have been discontinued, but I'm sure other packages are available.

[Jonathan Kay]

Quoting FramerateUK: 

You can encrypt a drive, file or an entire machine. If can even force passwords before loading the OS. I would recommend this if you're travelling a lot. I would have recommended TruCrypt but it seems to have been discontinued, but I'm sure other packages are available.

That's a built-in option in OS X: "FireVault".

 

Jonathan

 

Edited by - Jonathan Kay on 15 Jul 2014 10:01:15

[CharlesElliott]

I think Crashplan is excellent. It is more of a 'backup' than storage but you can restore individual files and it keeps versions at a frequency you choose. It can backup to other PCs/removable hard drives etc. for free, or the cloud at a cost.

[Guest]

Just be aware that some plans (I use Carbonite) are really a mirror of your hard drive. If you delete a file from your computer after 30 days or so it will go from the backup. So plan accordingly.

 

Ideally you should keep one back up off site. (swap drives and take to work?)

 

This is one formula: 3 2 1 backup explained here

 

The Backup Rule of Three

 

Here's the rule of three. It's a long time computer-person rule of thumb that you can apply to your life now. It's also called the Backup 3-2-1 rule.

 

3 copies of anything you care about - Two isn't enough if it's important.

2 different formats - Example: Dropbox+DVDs or Hard Drive+Memory Stick or CD+Crash Plan, or more

1 off-site backup - If the house burns down, how will you get your memories back?

 

 

 

[Croc]

 

Having lost a laptop in a plane crash, I am a firm believer in offsite back up. I take two prong approach:

 

1) I use time machine on my Macbook and a weekly scheduled back up for my Windows laptop to a USB HD. These are my local home back ups

2) I use Carbonite for both the Macbook and the laptop for offsite back up.

 

I have had reason to use Carbonite to recover twice now and it was reassuring to see it worked exactly how it said it would - no issues, no hassles.

 

I also have the obligatory 2gb free Dropbox which I use as a quick back up for camera photos when I am out in the field as the replication process for Carbonite is not instant and I am not carrying my time machine HD with me.

 

Two other things to keep in mind:

1) The initial back up for many of these services can take a long time depending on your connection. My first Carbonite back up run of my Macbook with all its pics/videos/docs took 3 days solid (140gb). After that it is on a change based back up and fairly efficient.

2) Not all files are automatically backed up. Check the settings to make sure they are. For example Carbonite will exclude video files and some image/document files unless you tell it to include (which is really easy to do).

[LazerBrain]

Quoting Croc: 

I also have the obligatory 2gb free Dropbox which I use as a quick back up for camera photos when I am out in the field as the replication process for Carbonite is not instant and I am not carrying my time machine HD with me.

There are a few things you can do to extend the Dropbox limit, without having to pay. If someone joins Dropbox via your invitation, or you enable auto photo uploads from a smartphone you get a size increase. Mine's around 60 GB now.

 

There's some really useful points made in this thread, to which I can only add:

 

1) make sure you know how to get data back from any backup (whether local or cloud storage.) This also implies verifying that it's been backed up up successfully.

 

2) Know how to work out where any particular file is backed up and which version is backed up. Consider what happens if your backup runs, then you rename a file, then it backs up again the following day.

[AMMO]

Thanks for your replies.

 

I have used Dropbox for transferring large files to the photo lab and sending work to clients. I have also used Crashplan on a a friend's server when I had an iMac. I did lose an image once. There was a preview jpeg on my computer screen but somehow the actual Raw file was missing. Went on Crashplan and it was still there on my friend's server.

 

Whilst traveling internet connections can be a bit sketchy but I suppose the computer can be left on overnight in the hope that it will back up if I am going to use something like Crashplan or Cloud storage. I like the idea of Cloud storage as I can store all the images that are currently on my external hard drives and have them accessible from anywhere.

 

I have thought of keeping the memory cards with the images still on them until I reliable backup can be made. In fact I still have the undeleted cards from my two month stay in Italy. I won't erase them until my new hard drive arrives and I can do a Time Machine backup.

 

I don't erase any images I take and I want to keep them in Raw so they can be re-worked at a later date. I keep everything as I have found from the days of shooting film that the images around the one you thinks the killer shot with the passing of time sometimes can end up being more important. The images around the main shot also tell a story of where you were and what happened on the same day or same period of time. I don't shoot anything that is not interesting to me and I don't "spray and pray", shoot a lot in the hope something good will come out. I have finally learnt to shoot digital as if it was film and not over shoot. Saves a lot of time editing!

 

So the plan could be a copy on the computer, a backup on TimeMachine and keep the images on the memory card. Do not erase the memory card until the info can be put on the Cloud or somewhere else that is secure and off site as well. It makes a lot of sense to follow the three copy rule.

 

Thanks again.

 

[CharlesElliott]

Crashplan can have multiple targets - so I backup data to my server and to the cloud.

[AMMO]

Thanks for that extra snippet of information Charles.

 

A friend from the States has just recommended Microsoft Office 365. They have a Mac version too. $100.00 a year for the software and 1TB of storage. Anyone use this? Any comments?

 

Ta.

[eagle]

Not sure if it's of any use but box.com offer 10gb free storage. Biggest downside is a limit on filesize (250mb I think?).

[CharlesElliott]

Crashplan is unlimited. (I have > 1Tb data with them)

 

You can backup to:

 

- a directory/drive

- another PC or server you have

- an external drive

- a PC or server that a friend has (your data is encrypted)

- the cloud

 

or any selection/combination of the above.

[CharlesElliott]

And it is free for everything except the last option.