On-line Backup

[rowlandw]

Good article, Bob on external terabyte hard-drive storage.  However, what do you recommend for online backup?  Specifically, a robust online archiving service for non-sync'ed backup.  I want to off-load my images from my computer to online archiving and know that the online image won't delete when deleted from my computer.   

[KeithB]

I think it will be cost prohibitive for a serious photographer.  Barracuda online backup costs $0.50 per GB per month.

10,000 photos at 20 MB each (roughly the size of a 7D RAW file) is 200 GB or $1200 per year.
100,000 photos at 20 MB each would cost $12,000 per year!

[Bob Atkins]

As Keith says, on some sites it's cost prohibitive if you have a serious number of images, plus unless you have FiOS internet service and pay for unlimited badndwidth, uploading a large number of images is pretty time consuming.

Take a look at http://www.carbonite.com/ they are advertising a flat fee of around $55/yr with "unlimited backup capacity". However they also say "...if you have 3GB of data on your computer, your initial backup will take about 24 hours. If you have 30GBs of data, your initial backup will take about 10 days...". I have about 200GB backed up, which on carbonite would take about 2 months to upload! Still, if you don't have a lot to upload maybe it would be OK.

[Johnf]

I agree ... good article.  I did the same thing.  I had a 500 Gb external drive for back up of music files and a 1 TB external drive for bac up of photo files (and my documents which takes only a tiny fraction).  This is a great solution for computer crashes and if you want a clean start to rid the computer of any spyware malware or any of those were's you can easily reinstall your OS on a cleanly formatted disk.  I've done that about 3 times in 4 years.  It works great!  But what about fire, flood that kind of thing.  So I did look into online backup.  I tried carbonite but it does not support external drives.  I use Mozy.  It was $79 for the year, unlimited storage.  I have about 700GB in music files and photo files (5D II Files are big!).  Now I have no music or photos on the computers "C" Drive, "L" is music and "K" is photos and I have the whole thing backed up on Mozy.  I even tested it by deleting and recovering a photo file and then comparing the data and it is identical.  I have Comcast internet, not the really fast one ($150/mo) but not the really slow one either and it took about 3 months to back up!  Once the initial back up is complete Mozy works well and in the background.  I would highly recommend it.

Rowlandw, For archiving I think TB drives are so inexpensive I would just get another one then back it up on line, no extra cost for the back up the way I am doing it.  Tigerdirect.com has 1TB drives for $59 and Vantec enclosures for $34 for the e-sata one or $29 for the USB 2.0 one.  You can add a whole TB of archive for less than the cost of an good 8GB CF card.

Have fun

[KeithB]

I guess one other problem is that what happens when Carbonite or Mozy goes out of business?

[Bob Atkins]

Google offer online storage. Their rates are:

  20 GB ($5.00 USD per year) 
  80 GB ($20.00 USD per year) 
  200 GB ($50.00 USD per year) 
  400 GB ($100.00 USD per year) 
  1 TB ($256.00 USD per year) 

I doubt they will be going out of business anytime soon. However, you could buy four 1TB hard drives for the cost of 1 year's 1 TB storage and have faster data transfer. If you're worried about your house buring down, you could run an ethernet line out to a garden shed and put your backup system there (in a waterproof enclosure of course...!

[KeithB]

Or use alternate backups and keep one offsite - at your work, maybe.  (I have have heard that some photographers actually use safety deposit boxes.)