Greetings all. I have been seriously involved in photography since 1959 when I built my first darkroom. My thousands of early images have the ultimate backup, the original negatives. At first I scanned my negs with a high end dedicated film scanner, then I switched to digital capture about 20 or more years ago. Early on I filed my images ( scans and digital) on two CDs, then I switched to two DVDs, then two Blue Ray discs. Files got bigger and I switched to two duplicate external hard drives. At first the two external drives were 1 TB each, then two TB each, and now I have two 5 TB each. So right now my external drives hold 1TB + 2TB, plus about half of the 5 TB drives. At my age I have become conscious of saving my files for kids, grand kids and great grand kids, and have been thinking that in addition to my external hard drives I should pursue cloud storage as an additional back up to my external drives (but not my hundreds of CDs, DVDs, and BLU-RAYS~ There are just too many of them). So My work flow would be: down load raw files to my internal hard drive, and back up to two external drives. Process the Raws in DXO, Photoshop, etc, make prints etc and file those finished images temporarily on my internal drive, and file permanent copies to the two external drives. And this would be the new item: upload to the cloud.
My wife has been a long time member to Amazon Prime, which includes free shipping, often next day. I just found out they have “unlimited” cloud photo storage for no cost. They say they accept full size high resolution, uncompressed images, but they also mention cell phone images. I use Sony full frame A7RIV (61 mp), and Fuji GFX 100 (100 mp). If I go this route I would have about 5.5 TB of files to transfer from my external drives to the cloud. Anyone make a guess how long this might take? Would I need to sit there and baby sit it? Does the Amazon cloud look like the way to go, or do you see a better route?
Thanks for reading my long winded essay. I tried to give you a good insight as to what my desire is. I have a PC and Windows 10.
I'm on a "fast" Internet connection (1 Gbps down, but only 20 mbps—very roughly 2 MB/s; ~7 GB/hour— upload), [Note: although 20 mbps upload, there's also overhead so it doesn't exactly translate to MB/s] At my upload speed and assuming no disruptions, it would take about 90 years if my math's about right. After my provider upgrades to symmetrical service, that would drop to about 1.25 years (give or take). Of course any interruption will increase the time. You could do a similar calculation after measuring your upload speed.
What you might do is a trial run: upload ~1 GB of your images to "The Cloud", time how long it takes, and then multiply the time by 5500 (5500 GB/your 1 GB test).
Why are you contemplating doing this? Backup? Access from any device anywhere? Sharing with family?
dgurtch wrote:
It was just a thought thinking maybe dual external hard drives may not be safe enough.
Thanks
Dave
Dave, you're on the right track, in that a backup with no off-site copy isn't a truly safe backup. If a singular event (fire, flood, tornado) destroyed your house, you'd want the ability to grab the off site masters down the line.
That said, 5TB is a significant amount of data that will take some time to upload. I am not convinced that Amazon Prime's "unlimited" plan is meant to be used in this way, and further, I wouldn't tie my offsite backups to a program like Prime...I'd rather have it through a company that specializes in data redundancy.
Perhaps take a look at Backblaze...they charge about $6/month/TB, so you'd be at about $60/month.
Microsoft 365 licenses come with 1TB and you can add 5TB for $50/month. These are pretty standard rates, but it adds up quickly. Ultimately, you have decide if you could function with no off-site backup...or perhaps could trim down what you put in the cloud to reduce the space you need.
Regarding uploading, that part is easy. Backblaze has a client, as do programs like Google/MS/Etc...they will simply do the work in the background until complete.
dgurtch wrote:
It was just a thought thinking maybe dual external hard drives may not be safe enough.
Thanks
Dave
Sounds like you're looking at this as a recovery option in case you "at home" copy/copies are lost. What you're really doing is deciding what cause of loss you want to protect against, and what option(s) you have. Other options you might consider:
- Get a good fire safe and use it to store a spare copy. That makes the copy safe unless your home is destroyed, and it's easy to swap backup disks.
If you're worried about your home/neighborhood/geographic region getting lost AND are OK with the remote backup copy being out of sync with your primary (which I'd recommend you have a duplicate of at your home):
- Keep a spare backup copy in a safe deposit box and regularly exchange your primary (at home) disk with that one.
- Give a copy to someone who lives some distance from you, and again regularly swap disks. If you both did this, you'd both have off-site backup, although not always synched with your latest images.
But if you want "in sync most of the time" (given that Internet-based synching takes some amount of time, during which the remote won't be synched with your main drive), then a reliable cloud provider is the choice I'd suggest.
It's always about the loss you're aiming to protect against and the price you're willing to pay to take care of it. Cloud has monetary and time costs; other options cost varying amounts and have some data loss risk. Kinda like other insurance policies.
Abbott Schindl wrote:
Sounds like you're looking at this as a recovery option in case you "at home" copy/copies are lost. What you're really doing is deciding what cause of loss you want to protect against, and what option(s) you have. Other options you might consider:
- Get a good fire safe and use it to store a spare copy. That makes the copy safe unless your home is destroyed, and it's easy to swap backup disks.
If you're worried about your home/neighborhood/geographic region getting lost AND are OK with the remote backup copy being out of sync with your primary (which I'd recommend you have a duplicate of at your home):
- Keep a spare backup copy in a safe deposit box and regularly exchange your primary (at home) disk with that one.
- Give a copy to someone who lives some distance from you, and again regularly swap disks. If you both did this, you'd both have off-site backup, although not always synched with your latest images.
But if you want "in sync most of the time" (given that Internet-based synching takes some amount of time, during which the remote won't be synched with your main drive), then a reliable cloud provider is the choice I'd suggest.
It's always about the loss you're aiming to protect against and the price you're willing to pay to take care of it. Cloud has monetary and time costs; other options cost varying amounts and have some data loss risk. Kinda like other insurance policies....Show more →
Yes, the idea of doing a "once a month" update to a large external and keeping that at the bank in a deposit box is a valid and cheaper alternative to the cloud for sure.
- put all your files on one main external hard drive
- use a program like chrono sync to automatically sync that hard drive to a second external hard drive that’s always connected to your computer
- use the same program to once a month sync the main drive to a third hard drive that you keep at a child’s of friend’s location between syncs
- take out a backblaze backup account ($60 or so a year) to automatically back up the main drive in the cloud; depending on your internet speed the first upload will take a while but measured in weeks probably and as long as you leave your computer on and hooked up to the net, it will happen without you having to do a thing
dgurtch wrote:
......... now I have two 5 TB each. So right now my external drives hold 1TB + 2TB, plus about half of the 5 TB drives. At my age I have become conscious of saving my files for kids, grand kids and great grand kids, .......
Do you seriously believe any of those relatives are going to want to sort through all those files at some time in the near or far future?
dgurtch wrote:
Greetings all. I have been seriously involved in photography since 1959 when I built my first darkroom. My thousands of early images have the ultimate backup, the original negatives. At first I scanned my negs with a high end dedicated film scanner, then I switched to digital capture about 20 or more years ago. Early on I filed my images ( scans and digital) on two CDs, then I switched to two DVDs, then two Blue Ray discs. Files got bigger and I switched to two duplicate external hard drives. At first the two external drives were 1 TB each, then two TB each, and now I have two 5 TB each. So right now my external drives hold 1TB + 2TB, plus about half of the 5 TB drives. At my age I have become conscious of saving my files for kids, grand kids and great grand kids, and have been thinking that in addition to my external hard drives I should pursue cloud storage as an additional back up to my external drives (but not my hundreds of CDs, DVDs, and BLU-RAYS~ There are just too many of them). So My work flow would be: down load raw files to my internal hard drive, and back up to two external drives. Process the Raws in DXO, Photoshop, etc, make prints etc and file those finished images temporarily on my internal drive, and file permanent copies to the two external drives. And this would be the new item: upload to the cloud.
My wife has been a long time member to Amazon Prime, which includes free shipping, often next day. I just found out they have “unlimited” cloud photo storage for no cost. They say they accept full size high resolution, uncompressed images, but they also mention cell phone images. I use Sony full frame A7RIV (61 mp), and Fuji GFX 100 (100 mp). If I go this route I would have about 5.5 TB of files to transfer from my external drives to the cloud. Anyone make a guess how long this might take? Would I need to sit there and baby sit it? Does the Amazon cloud look like the way to go, or do you see a better route?
Thanks for reading my long winded essay. I tried to give you a good insight as to what my desire is. I have a PC and Windows 10.
Maybe buy a few 8TB SSDs and rotate offsite. The bare M.2 SSD weighs 8.6g. I use various enclosures, including a docker, but a small enclosure with the SSD is about 75g. That easily fits in the pants. A phone with small case weighs about triple that.
Well, if those files were well managed (organized, appropriate metadata added) AND you happened to leave the relatives/friends/whomever instructions on how everything worked, then YES, I'd bet that some of the people who have access to my library will definitely access it. In fact, I'm sure of it, as the kids have already indicated interest in doing so.
Abbott Schindl wrote:
Well, if those files were well managed (organized, appropriate metadata added) AND you happened to leave the relatives/friends/whomever instructions on how everything worked, then YES, I'd bet that some of the people who have access to my library will definitely access it. In fact, I'm sure of it, as the kids have already indicated interest in doing so.
The key is having the files organized so the kids can easily and quickly locate files they are interested in. Otherwise, kids having to sort through thousands of files may not have the time or interest.
Most of us know of people who just trashed all the slides and/or negatives that they had to deal with when their parents died. Now when parents or relatives die, the number of digital files can outnumber slides and negatives by the thousands. So just because they are now digital does not mean it is easier due to the far greater number to deal with. It is even harder to deal with a combination of slides, negative, prints, and digital files.
Imagemaster wrote:
The key is having the files organized so the kids can easily and quickly locate files they are interested in. Otherwise, kids having to sort through thousands of files may not have the time or interest.
Most of us know of people who just trashed all the slides and/or negatives that they had to deal with when their parents died. Now when parents or relatives die, the number of digital files can outnumber slides and negatives by the thousands. So just because they are now digital does not mean it is easier due to the far greater number to deal with. It is even harder to deal with a combination of slides, negative, prints, and digital files.
