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cloud backup for photography
3 replies 213 views
10-15-2015, 11:58 AM Christopher Loffredo
I was just wondering if anyone has any experience with an online cloud backup service like carbonite for their photo library. I'll back up everything but my 1.5TB photo library is 99% of my storage and my biggest concern.

I was thinking on continuing to use local drive(s) for photo working purposes. I'm using Adobe lightroom and photoshop and assume its best to keep the main library local.

Other options are cloud services from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.

Looking for simple and functional.

Appreciate any thoughts.

Chris
10-15-2015, 01:32 PM Bob Stocker
For several years Nancy and I have been using Crash Plan from http://www.code42.com/ to back up everything of value (and many things that aren't). Between the two of us, we have 6.8 TB somewhere out on the cloud. Backed up files including multiple versions of changed files are kept forever. We use a family plan that allows us to back up multiple computers. Storage is unlimited. Software works on both Macs and PCs.

The biggest drawback to cloud backup of any kind is upload speed. Typically, Internet service providers have much slower upload speeds than download speeds -- and upload speeds don't typically improve when you pay more for "faster" service. Crash Plan gets around this by purchasing a 1 TB seed disk option. They mail you a 1 TB disk. You fill it up and mail it back to them to get your first 1 TB onto their servers without having to go though the Internet.

Backup to the cloud can be tedious. We recently switched to 1 gigabit Internet which runs at 1 gigabit per second in both directions between our house and our ISP (CenturyLink). Speed between the ISP and Crash Plan are slower, but still much faster than our upload connection used to be. Before we went to gigabit, we'd often find backups of upteen gigabytes of new photos were taking days and even weeks. Now we rarely have backlogs of more than a few hours.

Bob
10-16-2015, 06:58 AM Richard Seeley
Hi Chris
I have been using Carbonate for 2 years now. Very convenient and almost invisible. I back up all of my files (video, images, documents, etc.) from my main drives on my desktop system. Can also do external drives at additional cost. I have about 500k files backed up. Another great feature of Carbonate is that the files are accessible when you are on the road. Just access Carbonite from your laptop, mobile device (yes has a mobile app) or tablet. I use Carbonite on my laptop and mobile device for backup as well. Price is reasonable.

However, I do not rely solely on Carbonite for my backup. All files get incrementally backed up every day to external backup drives. And a copy stored to a safe deposit box at a bank in a different town annually.

hope that helps

Rich Seeley
10-17-2015, 07:27 AM Justin Fedora
Chris,

This past summer I purchased a Synology NAS to store all my photos, videos, etc. There is a free Synology App you can load that does a full file sync, not backup, with Amazon's Cloud Drive. So for $60/year, you can have unlimited file sync. Amazon's service is not the easiest to use by itself, but with the Synology app, it works great. And it runs in the background, so your files are always synced. The Synology NAS is also fully accessable via any web browser, so you can have full access all your files. It's a great setup, I'd highly recommend it to anyone.

Cheers!

-Justin

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