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I want to start using cloud storage as I currently only use hard drives to backup images (just shy of 40k). Not sure of the best way to go about this, who to use and whether I should be backing up my files in a cloud as tiff's. I'll rarely need to retrieve images, so should pretty much only need to add/replace.

 

What do you recommend?

 

One other thing, what about 'security' when using this type of service?

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What I am doing is storing everything in external hard drives. One, is the master, other for back ups and the third in another location, just in case. I can image put all teras in "The Cloud". Every certaing number of years I join several masters into just one HD, now using 3T.

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I have my images stored in different places. Protection from crash as I once lost all my original RAWs in a hard drive crash. I keep them on hard drives and in the cloud. I only put the ones I have chosen to upload in the cloud, although I keep almost everything I shoot (except the real crap) on hard drives. I use box.com as they give you a free 50gb starter account for storage. So far that's good for me, but I would rather invest in a second back up hard drive than pay a monthly cloud storage fee.

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Had very bad experience with Carbonite a number of years ago. I simply don't trust it and I much prefer to use multiple HDs kept in two locations.

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I have over 300,000 images stored on many sites. Smugmug,Zenfolio.

Just Cloud backs up my computer.Backblaze is probably better though.I've had both.

I have about 7 external drives and still burn to DVDs as well.I keep a set of DVD's and some hard drives off site.

 

I've lost data before.It takes time to back up but at the end of the day,I know my photos are secure.

 

I hear that Zenfolio will be accepting raw images next year!

L

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The only real benefit of cloud storage over a hard drive is if you want to access the images when away from home, so don't have them with you. Otherwise, its cheaper to keep a master and back-up hard drive.

 

You can set up some newer hard drives as NAS drives attached to your home router so you can access them wherever in the world you are as long as you have internet access. Your own version of the cloud :)

 

I think one problem with the cloud storage is trying to download all your files at once if the company hits trouble as happend with Digital Railroad. 

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Had a request for an original file from over ten years ago during a settlement release agreement negotiation. I backed up to DVDs in those days, and delved into the filing cabinets - opened the case and was greeted with a shower of silvery bits - shook them out and dusted off the surface before loading the disc in an old DVD/CD drive (not risking my Imacs drives) - it was there, but I've lost confidence in the discs (most of which look fine), so the contents are now on a couple of linked hard-drives.

 

Might pay to have a look at your archived stuff - My earliest are on Winchesters, and Syquests with a number of ZIPS as well, but have been pushed forward with most of the newer systems - I stupidly believed hype about DVDs and CDs........just to increase your paranoia quotient .......

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My own storage drama happened with my present iMac. It came to me new, with a faulty HD. Apple replaced the HD under the warranty. But not before I lost maybe 1/3 of my images. I thought I was more or less safe because I had a Western Digital external HD connect with Time Machine. With the new HD in place, I tried using Time Machine to retrieve my data . . . but it would not go back before the date of the crash. Useless. Please don't give me any technical explanations; I don't care about the details. I will never use Time Machine again. I do still use an external HD, two actually. 

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I back up raws and jpegs on various 3T hard drives in two different locales 1000 miles apart. A hundred bucks for a 3 terabyte hard drive is cheap insurance!

 

 I also use Zenfolio to upload my best jpeg selects. Plus I back up some of the better shots on CD and DVD in addition to HDs, though as mentioned above, CDs and DVDs can have a limited shelf life.

 

One note on CD and DVD that may be of interest to some is there are Gold CD and DVD's available that claim to be archival up to a hundred years and perhaps beyond.

 

Further, stashing a hard drive with all your worthy shots in a safe deposit box can be a good idea.

 

Considering that certain programs expire and thus some RAW files may not be readible in the future,  I think it may be wise to eventually back up all the better RAW files with one of the universal formats assured to be in existence for a long time which I think is DNG. (PNG?)

 

Ironically the only HD crash I have ever had was during the process of making a back up.

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I back up raws and jpegs on various 3T hard drives in two different locales 1000 miles apart. A hundred bucks for a 3 terabyte hard drive is cheap insurance!

 

 I also use Zenfolio to upload my best jpeg selects. Plus I back up some of the better shots on CD and DVD in addition to HDs, though as mentioned above, CDs and DVDs can have a limited shelf life.

 

One note on CD and DVD that may be of interest to some is there are Gold CD and DVD's available that claim to be archival up to a hundred years and perhaps beyond.

 

Further, stashing a hard drive with all your worthy shots in a safe deposit box can be a good idea.

 

Considering that certain programs expire and thus some RAW files may not be readible in the future,  I think it may be wise to eventually back up all the better RAW files with one of the universal formats assured to be in existence for a long time which I think is DNG. (PNG?)

 

Ironically the only HD crash I have ever had was during the process of making a back up.

Another interesting think is to have an old PC/MAC with older version of PS as back up just in case future OSs or PSs we could have problems with those old RAWs.

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I lost my oldest hard drive last month.It's the one where I stashed everything that I didn't want to clutter up my hard drive or desktop and all the 'work in progress' I didn't have time to get to. :-(

I am not exactly sure what was on that drive but it's 2TB and data recovery is very expensive.

I had personal and financial data on it so I will not be sending it off to an unknown company that could have a field day with this stuff.

Hopefully everything that was on that drive I did have covered on my other drives or on DVD's. I stashed the drive in a bank vault and if I ever remember something valuable and specific...well I might try and plug it in again or who knows,10 years from now new tools might be available to DIY.

 

I'm in a secure condo but robberies do happen.I like online storage for that fact;you just never know.

Also,being smack dab in a city on the lakefront,with scary winds these past several years(tornado sirens as part of the mix) I just don't feel secure having irreplaceable things in just one place.

 

I even keep copies of my copyright registrations on cloud storage as well as visual copies of the 200,000 images I have registered. I have those in catalog form and multi page pdf files.

 

I save backup copies of my software(serial #'s separate) because sometimes the versions we buy online will no longer be available in a few years. I save my raws as DNG files when I am done post processing.

Who knows if a 1999 native RAW file will open in 2030.

 

Call me paranoid,but years ago I cashed out my good jewelry,only keeping the real stuff I wear everyday.

 

When I was little our 2 flat was broken into and everything was stolen.My parents did not have any of the antiques or my moms heirloom jewelry insured so nothing was recovered.

 

I think that's left an impression on me so I'm cautious.

On another note,I do have a portion of my archives insured.Mostly the analog negatives and slides.The digital stuff I have redundant storage.

BTW-If you think your insurance covers this,you are probably wrong. You need to specifically request this and pay extra. I think it's under 'art' with my photo biz policy.

 

 

L

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Guest dlmphotog

Lots of good advise...  I’ll add my two cents.

 

I use surplus .50 caliber military ammo cans lined with closed-cell foam padding to store my HD’s in. For the closed-cell foam padding I cut up a backpacking sleeping pad (RidgeRest). Each HD is stored in an anti-static Mylar pouch. I can get about 6 HD in each can. The cans are very robust, waterproof and will shield the HD from EMP. :o

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Lots of good advise...  I’ll add my two cents.

 

I use surplus .50 caliber military ammo cans lined with closed-cell foam padding to store my HD’s in. For the closed-cell foam padding I cut up a backpacking sleeping pad (RidgeRest). Each HD is stored in an anti-static Mylar pouch. I can get about 6 HD in each can. The cans are very robust, waterproof and will shield the HD from EMP. :o

Glad it works for you but I'd be afraid to order such items as I'd fear 'men in black' would be knocking on my door wanting to have a look around,LOL! They'd see that this month I've been a terrible housekeeper and probably offer to hire back my maid. :-)

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I want to start using cloud storage as I currently only use hard drives to backup images (just shy of 40k). Not sure of the best way to go about this, who to use and whether I should be backing up my files in a cloud as tiff's. I'll rarely need to retrieve images, so should pretty much only need to add/replace.

 

What do you recommend?

 

One other thing, what about 'security' when using this type of service?

I'm just finishing the last stage of my backup system.

 

1. All work is carried out on a 1tb USB3 drive and is backed up to my NAS drive. The disk is encrypted.

2. The 4tb on a QNAP 412 NAS drive is setup as Raid 1 to protect against drive failure.

3. A second NAS operates as the main backup for the household, including images. This second NAS drive automatically backs up the first and protects agains hardware failure.

4. The final step that I'm putting in place is storing RAW's and processed Jpgs on Blu Ray discs. 2 Copies, one inside and another in a separate building in a fireproof safe.

 

I think that will do it..... a little paranoid but I don't believe you can be to safe about these things!

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Must get in touch with a contributor to the old forum who mentioned the construction of a Faraday Cage to me - he was really worried at the time about Electro Magnetic Pulses and Solar Flares - the problem that I could see was that if he was the only one on the planet with viable images - who was he going to sell them to ?

 

Bet it would boost the going rate though..........there's a meteor shower due at 4am tomorrow - would a roll of chicken wire around my Macs help ?   Suggestions welcome......I do know that Dusty Dingo keeps 'chooks' perhaps he's tried it......

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Guest dlmphotog

 would a roll of chicken wire around my Macs help ?   Suggestions welcome.....

 

David,

 

I don't know about chicken wire.... but my tin-foil hat keeps out those nasty cosmic rays... :D

 

 

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This is the way I do my files, don't know if this is right way or not since I am self taught and never had any one show me,

I shoot in raw then download to lightroom to a folder named raw files and convert to dng. I do the basics in lightroom than edit in ps for any advanced stuff. Then I save back to lightroom, it saves back as a tiff to the same raw folder. From here the file gets exported as a dng to a folder called processed dngs, and then exported as a jpeg to a folder called uploads for uploading to the web. After uploading I delete the jpeg file. The only jpeg on my comp. are snapshots of friends and family.

I use a backup utility called Genie Backup Manager Pro and backup all pics to an external hard drive with no compression.

Don't know if this is right but it is how I've been doing it. 

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Must get in touch with a contributor to the old forum who mentioned the construction of a Faraday Cage to me - he was really worried at the time about Electro Magnetic Pulses and Solar Flares - the problem that I could see was that if he was the only one on the planet with viable images - who was he going to sell them to ?

 

Bet it would boost the going rate though..........there's a meteor shower due at 4am tomorrow - would a roll of chicken wire around my Macs help ?   Suggestions welcome......I do know that Dusty Dingo keeps 'chooks' perhaps he's tried it......

Been looking at Faraday Cages for the past half hour online and it seems a microwave could work as one. Anyone on here have a cage of some sort?

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Must get in touch with a contributor to the old forum who mentioned the construction of a Faraday Cage to me - he was really worried at the time about Electro Magnetic Pulses and Solar Flares - the problem that I could see was that if he was the only one on the planet with viable images - who was he going to sell them to ?

 

Bet it would boost the going rate though..........there's a meteor shower due at 4am tomorrow - would a roll of chicken wire around my Macs help ?   Suggestions welcome......I do know that Dusty Dingo keeps 'chooks' perhaps he's tried it......

Been looking at Faraday Cages for the past half hour online and it seems a microwave could work as one. Anyone on here have a cage of some sort?

 

Thought that was a great idea, so put my hard-drive inside the one in our kitchen with a load of DVDs - unfortunately Mrs C pressed the button to turn it on - I'm sure it will be OK though........

 

In answer to your search for a cage Dusty Dingo has one for his chicken, or 'chooks' as he quaintly refers to them - he would probably rent out a bit of space if you happen to be in the Antipodes.......

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Must get in touch with a contributor to the old forum who mentioned the construction of a Faraday Cage to me - he was really worried at the time about Electro Magnetic Pulses and Solar Flares - the problem that I could see was that if he was the only one on the planet with viable images - who was he going to sell them to ?

 

Bet it would boost the going rate though..........there's a meteor shower due at 4am tomorrow - would a roll of chicken wire around my Macs help ?   Suggestions welcome......I do know that Dusty Dingo keeps 'chooks' perhaps he's tried it......

Been looking at Faraday Cages for the past half hour online and it seems a microwave could work as one. Anyone on here have a cage of some sort?

 

Thought that was a great idea, so put my hard-drive inside the one in our kitchen with a load of DVDs - unfortunately Mrs C pressed the button to turn it on - I'm sure it will be OK though........

 

In answer to your search for a cage Dusty Dingo has one for his chicken, or 'chooks' as he quaintly refers to them - he would probably rent out a bit of space if you happen to be in the Antipodes.......

 

 

Nearly :) . . . my chooks run free and only go under the garlic-festooned, tin-foil lined faraday cage to sleep . . . like me.

 

dd

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That really is a nasty Avatar from Dusty Dingo - I assume that it refers to him having had a hit on his earnings by some sort of Refund problem ?

 

No other Urns spring to mind.........

 

(Sorry the Rest of the World I think it is really a Cricket thing.......)

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