Online storage

AHarvey · 24 May 2015 at 19:43

Hi all,

I'm working through our IT setup at home and I've been considering creating a little server with several 4tb hdd's. use one for films and music, the other for home videos and photos, then set up 2 other hdd's to mimic them as a backup system. Two kids now so backing up those photos/videos is important.

I've considered also having a 3rd option of online backup. What services are you lot using to backup online? Flickr? 500px?

I've always known that Google offered 15gb of space, however I noticed just that they offer unlimited storage space if the photos are:

Standard size: photos are 2048px or less on the longest edge and videos are less than 15 mins long and max res of 1080p. Photos no larger than 100MB.

ChrisD. · 25 May 2015 at 08:00

Crashplan.

mr tommo · 25 May 2015 at 19:19

I use Squirrelsave. Upload speed averages 1.1 MB/s

Genoma · 27 May 2015 at 15:57

Your question aside, have you considered having at least one HDD offsite? (I keep mine at the office). Even better, rotate two HDDs offsite. It's cheap and fast to do, you just need a regular routine.

My main machine backs up to an external USB HDD every day, automated schedule, wakes the PC at 10AM and runs the backup with FreeFileSync. Once a month that HDD goes offsite and I bring one back to replace it.

Apart from that I keep redundant copies on other machines.

My last resourt is Flickr, they are free and relatively easy to upload a months worth of pics with Lightroom to an archive set. No RAW support though...

Ideally I would like a NAS, offside backups on USB HDD + Crashplan but what I have does the job at the moment.

fartingspartan · 29 May 2015 at 13:01

NAS that featured dropbox app built into it is how I do it.

NAS then mirrors to Dropbox - I have mines set to not mirror any large file types ie Films which I sync manually to a USB as and when it has changed enough to warrant it.

Could have your NAS set on Raid 1 or 5 to provide some level of local redundancy then as long as you store your USB copy somewhere offsite/away from NAS (eg Garage?) in the event of fire you pull everything down from dropbox and films from USB.

Interestingly Dropbox app on NAS allows 2 way Sync ie ie I access some of my files via Dropbox when out of the house - if I save the changes to dropbox the updated version goes back down to the local version on NAS.

Genoma · 29 May 2015 at 15:32

What NAS are you using for this FS?

abbotsmike · 31 May 2015 at 10:40

Windows server and a 10tb onedrive account here!

Desktop & laptop mirror to server, server mirrors to one drive and I copy to a USB drive periodically.

wildest_jjk · 31 May 2015 at 11:08

AHarvey said:
Hi all,

I'm working through our IT setup at home and I've been considering creating a little server with several 4tb hdd's. use one for films and music, the other for home videos and photos, then set up 2 other hdd's to mimic them as a backup system. Two kids now so backing up those photos/videos is important.

I've considered also having a 3rd option of online backup. What services are you lot using to backup online? Flickr? 500px?

I've always known that Google offered 15gb of space, however I noticed just that they offer unlimited storage space if the photos are:

Standard size: photos are 2048px or less on the longest edge and videos are less than 15 mins long and max res of 1080p. Photos no larger than 100MB.

Are you only wanting to backup photo and videos?

Vertigo · 31 May 2015 at 11:39

S2KIP said:
Crashplan.

Tried Crashplan twice and given up both times as their speeds are utter garbage.

All very well offering unlimited storage but they haven't upgraded their pipes to cope with it so it just crawls along. Tolerable if you just want to upload a few gigs of files but if you're talking hundreds of gigs of RAWs it's not viable.

Contrast with Azure which we use at work - that goes like stink.

2StepSteve · 31 May 2015 at 12:33

Crashplan does work if you're patient. I have 600GB stored with them, it took around 3 weeks to complete. It's not quick but it will serve its purpose.

I believe that Google will soon offer unlimited photo storage as announced at Google I/O. I expect their service will be far faster than Crashplan.

Vertigo · 31 May 2015 at 13:11

2StepSteve said:
Crashplan does work if you're patient. I have 600GB stored with them, it took around 3 weeks to complete. It's not quick but it will serve its purpose.

Even 3 weeks 24/7, 600GB equates to 2.7Mbps upstream. I was experiencing an average of 1Mbps.

crinkleshoes · 31 May 2015 at 23:20

Flickr offer 1TB free and seem to store in a good quality... with good sharing access / fast servers.

G Drive is $9.99/month for 1TB... which is what I have.

I think Dropbox are now also doing 1TB for $9.99/month... I think the Dropbox app works better and it definitely has lower overhead on the system.

I went with GDrive as, at the time, Dropbox was quite a bit more expensive... I've been thinking about switching.

Genoma · 1 Jun 2015 at 20:35

Don't Crashplan have a seeding option where you send them a copy of your files on physical media for the initial sync?

Moredhel · 1 Jun 2015 at 22:46

I'm still uploading my weekends shoots to crashplan today, about 2 days after I started. It's going at about 3.2MB/s (on a 100mbit upload) which isn't fantastic. But really it's running in the background so I don't care that much. I could probably not keep the original .NEF and a .DNG of every shot I take, I could also delete duds I guess. But I don't, I keep everything.

Their seeding option is available to the US only unfortunately.

Their client at least is vastly better than the awful backblaze one.

My current process is:

Import .NEF files to disk in the appropriate place.
Run through the .NEF files in DxO 9, generating .DNG files of the post-processed versions.
Import both .NEF and .DNG files into LightRoom to organise and continue post-processing if necessary.
Lightroom backs up to my DropBox.
Synctoy runs each evening and copies new photos into my dropbox
My remote server (the one with the 100mbit upstream) also syncs my dropbox, it takes the photos out as they arrive so my dropbox (only 1TB) doesn't fill up.
My server then immediately starts uploading them to Amazon Glacier, at the same time Crashplan which is running as a daemon on the server also starts uploading them.

The Glacier upload goes at nigh on 100mbit, the crashplan one takes a lot longer.

ChrisD. · 1 Jun 2015 at 23:16

Vertigo1 said:
Tried Crashplan twice and given up both times as their speeds are utter garbage.

All very well offering unlimited storage but they haven't upgraded their pipes to cope with it so it just crawls along. Tolerable if you just want to upload a few gigs of files but if you're talking hundreds of gigs of RAWs it's not viable.

Contrast with Azure which we use at work - that goes like stink.

I wasn't aware they'd become that bad, good to know.

syn3rgy · 2 Jun 2015 at 08:58

Genoma said:
Don't Crashplan have a seeding option where you send them a copy of your files on physical media for the initial sync?

I think only if you are in the US. they will also send you a drive with all your data on it to restore (if its large amounts) I think.

Also, If you are uploading from the UK it will be slower as they do not have any EU servers (yet) however, I manage to upload to them at a decent rate (2-3mb).

deshepherd · 3 Jun 2015 at 22:22

Been meaning to get some online storage sorted out for some time. I've got an HP microserver running ubuntu which I use as a NAS on or home network .... ideally I'd like something that could run on that (preferably without whizzy GUI interface as its a headless machine). Any ideas - crashplan looks possible though I'd probably need to run a vncserver to cope with its GUI.

Moredhel · 5 Jun 2015 at 12:14

I run crashplan headless, you can run the client locally and use an SSH tunnel to connect to the remote server, it works pretty well.