Author Topic: Web storage service (Read 10584 times)

brmonico · « **on:** January 14, 2013, 06:24 »

Hi all. Recently i have one external hard drive lost. I am very careful with my files and i have all storage in another disk but i lost some of my daughter movies that i´m able to restore , so is not a big deal.

I am looking for a web storage service (affordable) where i can put all my files and port, about 2TB, and i beat the wall against prices about $200 month for 1TB , for me is very, very expensive, but i think that one storage place in web where i never lost anything is very useful and highly demand to my work.

I found a place where i can set my own service and company of web storage, but is expensive just for me to use, so...two questions?

- Do you known about some really good place and affordable to keep our files safe?
- If i can get a service that provide this at an affordable price (ex. Like $120/year for 1 TB) would you consider to store files there? Just to do a little marketing inspection !!

Thanks.

alberto · « **Reply #1 on:** January 31, 2013, 08:31 »

Amazon S3; see the cost http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/

Maui · « **Reply #2 on:** January 31, 2013, 08:38 »

Crashplan, very affordable:

http://www.crashplan.com

But uploading 2TB of data will take a very long time.

stockastic · « **Reply #3 on:** January 31, 2013, 11:11 »

You can ship drives to Amazon and they will transfer the contents to S3. Their 'glacier' storage service is very inexpensive - the tradeoff is that access time (if you ever need to retrieve data) is long.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #4 on:** January 31, 2013, 12:23 »

Backblaze is reasonable. Initial upload may take weeks depending on your upload bandwidth. It's a backup service, not an archive (so if you want to delete files from your hard drives and leave it in the cloud storage, this isn't for you). But it is great that it just runs - no remembering involved. They don't include NAS drives but any external drives connected to your system (e.g. my Drobo) are covered for the $5 per month per system

I do keep archives - external drives on the bookshelves - for long term access, but I don't update those on a daily basis.

Sadstock · « **Reply #5 on:** January 31, 2013, 13:35 »

I also use Backblaze for my 1.8 TB of stock files and find them to be inexpensive and reliable. Initial uploading takes a long time, but maintenance uploading happens in the background, so it requires no additional effort on my part. I also have everything backed up to external drives and also DVD’s that I store off-site, so I have triplicates of everything stock related.

stockastic · « **Reply #6 on:** January 31, 2013, 14:09 »

There are now quite a number of cloud storage companies. Many are new, many are still small and not all will make it. I'd really hate to upload all my stuff and then have the company go out of business in a couple of years.

I'd hoped that by now MS SkyDrive would be in the big leagues, but it's still crippled by lack of functionality and it's starting to look like it's just going to be an extension to Office.

Travelling-light · « **Reply #7 on:** January 31, 2013, 17:22 »

A Pro Account at PhotoShelter will cost you $50/month with 1TB of storage, plus a portfolio website and a direct sales channel. More storage is available, and PS take care of backing up across multiple storage sites.

a1bercik · « **Reply #8 on:** January 31, 2013, 17:35 »

Or - if you don't believe in cloud solutions - you can buy unlimited hosting in a company (in my case Dreamhost), build your own interface and enjoy. I pay $100 a year, which is - in my opinion - cheap option, considering the fact that all my files are not on Google/Amazon/Other servers. This includes hosting, unlimited space, unlimited traffic, unlimited internal addresses, etc.
You can find plenty of similar options in US.

stockastic · « **Reply #9 on:** January 31, 2013, 18:04 »

Price is important, but so is the client program. If you're uploading a lot of stuff you'll need a smoothly functioning client piece on your end which will handle it all automatically, in the background, over a period of days or weeks if necessary. And it will need to detect changes and additions and keep the backup current.

I don't think Photoshelter can do that, can it?

Travelling-light · « **Reply #10 on:** January 31, 2013, 19:51 »

Quote from: stockastic on January 31, 2013, 18:04

Price is important, but so is the client program. If you're uploading a lot of stuff you'll need a smoothly functioning client piece on your end which will handle it all automatically, in the background, over a period of days or weeks if necessary. And it will need to detect changes and additions and keep the backup current.

I don't think Photoshelter can do that, can it?

The PS uploader can't do continuous backups on its own.

For initial upload I would just put maybe 100 files at a time into Filezilla and FTP up direct from my local server.

For easy updating I would run a scheduled weekly RoboCopy job on my local server to put all files with their archive flags set, in a given set of folders, into outbound folders, then run an automated FTP transfer of those folders to PhotoShelter.

brmonico · « **Reply #11 on:** February 02, 2013, 12:51 »

I saw the Amazon S3 , looks great but i have to admit i don´t understand nothing of that price list.....And they charge for communications when we download the files?

stockastic · « **Reply #12 on:** February 02, 2013, 20:17 »

Quote from: brmonico on February 02, 2013, 12:51

I saw the Amazon S3 , looks great but i have to admit i don´t understand nothing of that price list.....And they charge for communications when we download the files?

Yes, there are charges for storage, and for bandwidth.

leaf · « **Reply #13 on:** February 03, 2013, 09:12 »

Quote from: jsnover on January 31, 2013, 12:23

Backblaze is reasonable. Initial upload may take weeks depending on your upload bandwidth. It's a backup service, not an archive (so if you want to delete files from your hard drives and leave it in the cloud storage, this isn't for you). But it is great that it just runs - no remembering involved. They don't include NAS drives but any external drives connected to your system (e.g. my Drobo) are covered for the $5 per month per system

I do keep archives - external drives on the bookshelves - for long term access, but I don't update those on a daily basis.

thanks for the suggestion. I'm giving them a try

randymckown · « **Reply #14 on:** March 09, 2013, 08:36 »

cheaper one time fee solution ... go to wal-mart and buy a fireproof safe then head over to BestBuy and pick up an extra external drive.

shiyali · « **Reply #15 on:** March 09, 2013, 08:48 »

Check this out
http://www.onlinestoragesolutions.co.uk/mega.html

Mega Pro will give you 2TB for 200,-Euro per year.

gillian vann · « **Reply #16 on:** April 13, 2013, 16:58 »

I've been looking into crashplan, $70 for the year, unlimited storage. I've got a hard drive from 2011 that powers up but can't be recognised, it'll no doubt cost more than that just to have some tech person recover it.

[rant]
No doubt USA plans are cheaper, cos we get "the lucky country" premium added to all our costs and services.
[/rant]

RacePhoto · « **Reply #17 on:** April 13, 2013, 19:33 »

Most of the time those unrecognized drives are the controller card, not the drive. You can pull the drive and put it into an external caddy, dock, bay (whatever someone calls it) read everything. Worth the try and then you can use the docking station for an external drive as a backup, so no loss. 1T drives are under $100.

Sorry but still save your own on a drive is much less expensive than paying for storage on the web. Thing time and speed also.

This one reads IDE and SATA, if you'll never see another IDE in your lifetime, they make a dual SATA that does copies, drive to drive. There's your backup! Around fifty bucks, just buy a new drive every year and keep using the old ones until they go up in smoke. Copies laptop drives, hard drives, backs up drives...

Inexpensive redundant backup.

http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Drive-Docking-Station-2-5in/dp/B002UAR8JY/ref=sr_1_11?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1365899321&sr=1-11&keywords=external+hard+drive+bay+star+tech

Quote from: gillian on April 13, 2013, 16:58

I've been looking into crashplan, $70 for the year, unlimited storage. I've got a hard drive from 2011 that powers up but can't be recognised, it'll no doubt cost more than that just to have some tech person recover it.

[rant]
No doubt USA plans are cheaper, cos we get "the lucky country" premium added to all our costs and services.
[/rant]

ppdd · « **Reply #18 on:** April 13, 2013, 21:23 »

Wouldn't Amazon Glacier be perfect for this? Basically designed to be cheap to upload, not designed for a lot of retrieval until you need it. I think this would be different than just the S3 services, yes?

http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/

gillian vann · « **Reply #19 on:** April 14, 2013, 02:00 »

Quote from: RacePhoto on April 13, 2013, 19:33

Most of the time those unrecognized drives are the controller card, not the drive. You can pull the drive and put it into an external caddy, dock, bay (whatever someone calls it) read everything. Worth the try and then you can use the docking station for an external drive as a backup, so no loss. 1T drives are under $100.

Sorry but still save your own on a drive is much less expensive than paying for storage on the web. Thing time and speed also.

This one reads IDE and SATA, if you'll never see another IDE in your lifetime, they make a dual SATA that does copies, drive to drive. There's your backup! Around fifty bucks, just buy a new drive every year and keep using the old ones until they go up in smoke. Copies laptop drives, hard drives, backs up drives...

Inexpensive redundant backup.

http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Drive-Docking-Station-2-5in/dp/B002UAR8JY/ref=sr_1_11?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1365899321&sr=1-11&keywords=external+hard+drive+bay+star+tech

Quote from: gillian on April 13, 2013, 16:58
I've been looking into crashplan, $70 for the year, unlimited storage. I've got a hard drive from 2011 that powers up but can't be recognised, it'll no doubt cost more than that just to have some tech person recover it.

[rant]
No doubt USA plans are cheaper, cos we get "the lucky country" premium added to all our costs and services.
[/rant]

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understood much of that.

but a 1T hard drive is @$100, and i'd need one per year, so $70 for back up that (knock on wood) will never fail is a good deal.

RacePhoto · « **Reply #20 on:** April 16, 2013, 13:30 »

Quote from: gillian on April 14, 2013, 02:00

Quote from: RacePhoto on April 13, 2013, 19:33
Most of the time those unrecognized drives are the controller card, not the drive. You can pull the drive and put it into an external caddy, dock, bay (whatever someone calls it) read everything. Worth the try and then you can use the docking station for an external drive as a backup, so no loss. 1T drives are under $100.

Sorry but still save your own on a drive is much less expensive than paying for storage on the web. Thing time and speed also.

This one reads IDE and SATA, if you'll never see another IDE in your lifetime, they make a dual SATA that does copies, drive to drive. There's your backup! Around fifty bucks, just buy a new drive every year and keep using the old ones until they go up in smoke. Copies laptop drives, hard drives, backs up drives...

Inexpensive redundant backup.

http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Drive-Docking-Station-2-5in/dp/B002UAR8JY/ref=sr_1_11?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1365899321&sr=1-11&keywords=external+hard+drive+bay+star+tech

Quote from: gillian on April 13, 2013, 16:58
I've been looking into crashplan, $70 for the year, unlimited storage. I've got a hard drive from 2011 that powers up but can't be recognised, it'll no doubt cost more than that just to have some tech person recover it.

[rant]
No doubt USA plans are cheaper, cos we get "the lucky country" premium added to all our costs and services.
[/rant]

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understood much of that.

but a 1T hard drive is @$100, and i'd need one per year, so $70 for back up that (knock on wood) will never fail is a good deal.

What is "Never Fail" and the drives last five years, I just made the relative comparison that you could buy a new one every year and it would be less that storing off site and you would have complete control, redundant backup.

Also backup and archiving are two different things. People often use backup services, and delete from their hard drive, only to find out, the files are also deleted from the backup. They blame the backup.

People have raid drives and do the same, but they blame the drives for "losing their data". When it was operator error.

People format drives or delete everything and then claim it was equipment failure. Odd, it's always the computers fault, isn't it. That poor innocent little box?

1T Sata drive $90 OfficeMax, I didn't even try for sale items or websites. 2T drives are often $100, which is still cheap.

Anyway, if you have a defective drive, which is likely to be a fried drive controller, get an external dock or find someone who owns one. Your recover may be much less than the worst case. Here's hoping?

No I don't like renting electronic storage that I have no control over or their security. These remote sites have actually irrecoverably lost data, more than once!

Gannet77 · « **Reply #21 on:** April 16, 2013, 13:53 »

Another one that comes highly recommended is Carbonite.

They backup automatically in the background, encrypted, unlimited storage, one computer from $59/year, or $99 to include external drives.

You can get a free trial from them too, just to try it out.

Gannet77 · « **Reply #22 on:** April 16, 2013, 13:59 »

Quote from: gillian on April 13, 2013, 16:58

I've been looking into crashplan, $70 for the year, unlimited storage. I've got a hard drive from 2011 that powers up but can't be recognised, it'll no doubt cost more than that just to have some tech person recover it.

Not a storage service, but if the drive is still visible in BIOS, you could try SpinRite from grc.com. Very good at fixing bad sectors and recovering faulty drives. It does cost $89 - I've found it worth every penny. You can use it as many times as you need in the future too...

gillian vann · « **Reply #23 on:** April 16, 2013, 17:48 »

so far I haven't needed to access files from that drive. or rather, the one time I did (and found it wasn't being recognised, tried it on 3 computers btw) I had the raw files on another back up.

I put all my stock files onto the new drive each year, so I have those files in 3 places now.
I wouldn't delete files if I used online back up, it would just be another safety net. I suppose I should look at buying my drives (indeed, almost anything!) online from the USA, probably much cheaper than here in Australia.

Of course you could also use dropbox as a backup? isn't that an easy solution?

Gannet77 · « **Reply #24 on:** April 16, 2013, 18:16 »

Quote from: gillian on April 16, 2013, 17:48

Of course you could also use dropbox as a backup? isn't that an easy solution?

You could to some extent, but it would hardly be easy. I suppose it would do if you only had a small number of files though. Dropbox is really just online storage, offering only limited space - and costs more if you want larger amounts. It's really intended for file transfer, sharing and temporary storage, not as a backup solution.

Carbonite gives you unlimited storage, with automatic background upload of selected files and backup copies from up to 3 months past. It's also automatically encrypted before upload - you control the encryption key if you want, so nobody, not even Carbonite themselves, can read your files.

Of course that could be a problem if you forget your password...

RacePhoto · « **Reply #25 on:** April 18, 2013, 14:01 »

Yes, and I keep forgetting another solution. Register a domain name, get some hosting, store your own files. Only you have access, they are on servers, and if you want to link to something you can. But the nice part is, for $100a year, you have all the storage and backup that you need. 100% secure and only you have your files.

I'll try the drive dock thing again, just in case. Did you take the drive and put it into and external USB holder? Not into another computer, which changes nothing. Into something that doesn't run on the computer, but on it's own.

There are also drive recovery tools, software, you do the same. Plug the drive into an external holder, caddy, docking station, whatever. Run the software, which can take over 24 hours. It rebuilds the lost drive, sector by sector.

And since you found a backup, there's the good news.

Quote from: gillian on April 16, 2013, 17:48

so far I haven't needed to access files from that drive. or rather, the one time I did (and found it wasn't being recognised, tried it on 3 computers btw) I had the raw files on another back up.

I put all my stock files onto the new drive each year, so I have those files in 3 places now.
I wouldn't delete files if I used online back up, it would just be another safety net. I suppose I should look at buying my drives (indeed, almost anything!) online from the USA, probably much cheaper than here in Australia.

Of course you could also use dropbox as a backup? isn't that an easy solution?

click_click · « **Reply #26 on:** April 18, 2013, 14:19 »

Quote from: a1bercik on January 31, 2013, 17:35

Or - if you don't believe in cloud solutions - you can buy unlimited hosting in a company (in my case Dreamhost), build your own interface and enjoy. I pay $100 a year, which is - in my opinion - cheap option, considering the fact that all my files are not on Google/Amazon/Other servers. This includes hosting, unlimited space, unlimited traffic, unlimited internal addresses, etc.
You can find plenty of similar options in US.

Be very careful with that. Some web hosting companies do not like people using their servers for cloud storage.

If they sell web server space then it's mostly supposed to be used as web server space.

Startlogic threatened to kick me out because of I believe 1GB of forgotten stock footage clips on my web space.

Not cool.

gillian vann · « **Reply #28 on:** April 19, 2013, 04:01 »

^ bummer, requires a newer version of my OS

Dantheman · « **Reply #29 on:** April 19, 2013, 04:47 »

I also use Backblaze. Seems to work very well. The only downside was the long initial upload, took me 200 days to upload my whole pc. But thats not backblazes fault. My upload is just too slow

RacePhoto · « **Reply #30 on:** April 19, 2013, 13:00 »

Yes aside from the $99 a year part that is a problem for a penny pincher, cheapskate, like me. The time factor vs local storage is always there.

I'm not claiming the one true solution. Just the one that works for me, and trying to open ideas past "what's the best online backup" into, what ways can I effectively make good secure backups.

Home, own website, multiple hard drives (store a backup in a second location), pay for online storage. All have benefits and drawbacks, depending on what ones needs are.

200 days? Holy Cow, what's that dial-up!

Funny story, (maybe?) I did a hard drive of seven years backups to Picasa. Just for laughs. Not all the files, just the creation of thumbs and indexing. I thought maybe I could find things easier. It's on an old computer so I wouldn't waste the space on the working system, or the one that operates the business and office. Over 24 hours.

Then when I went to FL for Sebring, I started the face recognition on a Tuesday - got back Friday night and it was just finished. I think it was 72 hours working. Also no reason, just because I wanted to do it.

200 Days? Is that right? Imagine downloading everything if you needed a restoration. Not 200 hours?

Quote from: Dantheman on April 19, 2013, 04:47

I also use Backblaze. Seems to work very well. The only downside was the long initial upload, took me 200 days to upload my whole pc. But thats not backblazes fault. My upload is just too slow

cardmaverick · « **Reply #32 on:** April 20, 2013, 20:19 »

I use online storage solution (dot) com for my backups. It's a very powerful little service that's only $35 a year and gives you unlimited storage and you can backup from any device you have - internal drives, USB externals, etc.... they take it all - unlike most other services. It's also true cross platform, unlike most backup sites that only work with proprietary programs on Mac or Windows. They allow rsync to be used if your a power user, you can also use regular FTP, create public folders, users with login names, etc... It's really nice. The only downside, don't expect any customer support. It's mostly via email. With that said, it's a great bargain for the power user out there. They do seem to fix any issues fairly quick when you email them. I've been there for 2 years.

RacePhoto · « **Reply #33 on:** April 21, 2013, 19:30 »

Sounds like the best one I've ever heard of for people who want to go online. Similar features to Dropbox which I use for sending myself files, linking for people to pick up and some public things that I can later make disappear easily. And I have a free account, 8GB which does just enough for a job or my own little shared to all computers files.

$35 a year also hits the right price spot.

Quote from: cardmaverick on April 20, 2013, 20:19

I use online storage solution (dot) com for my backups. It's a very powerful little service that's only $35 a year and gives you unlimited storage and you can backup from any device you have - internal drives, USB externals, etc.... they take it all - unlike most other services. It's also true cross platform, unlike most backup sites that only work with proprietary programs on Mac or Windows. They allow rsync to be used if your a power user, you can also use regular FTP, create public folders, users with login names, etc... It's really nice. The only downside, don't expect any customer support. It's mostly via email. With that said, it's a great bargain for the power user out there. They do seem to fix any issues fairly quick when you email them. I've been there for 2 years.

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Author Topic: Web storage service (Read 10584 times)

brmonico

alberto

Maui

stockastic

Jo Ann Snover

Sadstock

stockastic

Travelling-light

a1bercik

stockastic

Travelling-light

brmonico

stockastic

leaf

randymckown

shiyali

gillian vann

RacePhoto

ppdd

gillian vann

RacePhoto

Gannet77

Gannet77

gillian vann

Gannet77

RacePhoto

click_click

PicturEngine-JustinB

gillian vann

Dantheman

RacePhoto

PicturEngine-JustinB

cardmaverick

RacePhoto

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