Looking for a good cloud storage solution

Tight Knot

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Hi all,

I'm looking for a good cloud storage solution that will allow me to backup my computer and a few different external drives. I want to keep as much saved in the cloud as possible, without it being deleted if I delete a file or folder from either my computer (where I keep all my current photo work) or if I delete something from my external hard-drives to keep more space available there without having to constantly buy new externals.
I currently try to keep 2 copies of my images on separate hard-drives in case of a failure on one of them, and I don't wnat ot have to keep on buying new hard-drives every few months.

Any ideas for 7 - 8 terabytes of cloud storage?

Thanks in advance,

Bruce
 
Looking forward to reading the opinions for this thread Bruce.

On the lighter side though, I knew that photogs were different and that we like to photograph in clouding days but is it really necessary to store your clouds??? lol
 
Looking forward to reading the opinions for this thread Bruce.

On the lighter side though, I knew that photogs were different and that we like to photograph in clouding days but is it really necessary to store your clouds??? lol
Hi Ron,
Wouldn't that be amazing to be able to store clouds? Need a little diffusion here or some sun rays shining there.... Just float 'em on up. Wow!! Talk about saving for a rainy day, we'd be saving for a sunny day. :1219:
 
AMAZON has just introduced unlimited cloud storage for $60 per year. Job Done

Amazon Cloud Drive
 
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
I used CrashPlan for about 2 years, but was seriously disappointed when I tried to restore some desktop files that I didn't have redundantly backed up on other local drives after a crash. It was then that I discovered that the service had failed miserably to do what it claimed in a BIG WAY, and the instructions from their techs were incredibly convoluted and, in the end, didn't work.

After re-reading the fine print on several cloud backup services output of that experience, I'm now trying BackBlaze. So far, I like the ease and interface much better than CrashPlan's, and it appears to actually be backing up all my files the way I want, and is making verification of what's backed up so far easy to see (one of the things I always had trouble with using CrashPlan).

As an Amazon Prime member, I got very excited at the "unlimited" free photo backup service they rolled out a few months ago for us, and jumped right in. Turned out to be WAY more trouble than it was worth, and I pulled my files from it and pulled the plug on the idea of trying to use it.

The new Amazon service at $60 per year looks far more promising, so far, but I haven't tried it yet.
 
Thanks so much everyone, the Amazon service does look good, and I'll also look into the BackBlaze (thanks Buster).
The funny thing is I looked into the Amazon service in the beginning of the week, but they didn't have that plan available the. It must be brand new (or I didn't look well enough).
I'll report back on what I use, and let you ll know how it works for me.

Thanks again, for all the input and have a great weekend.

Bruce
 
Thanks so much everyone, the Amazon service does look good, and I'll also look into the BackBlaze (thanks Buster).
The funny thing is I looked into the Amazon service in the beginning of the week, but they didn't have that plan available the. It must be brand new (or I didn't look well enough).
I'll report back on what I use, and let you ll know how it works for me.

Thanks again, for all the input and have a great weekend.

Bruce
Looking into BackBlaze shows me a slight problem,
As per BackBlaze Online Backup of All Your Data Backblaze
Backblaze will keep versions of a file that changes for up to 30 days. However, Backblaze is not designed as an additional storage system when you run out of space. Backblaze mirrors your drive. If you delete your data, it will be deleted from Backblaze after 30 days.
This may create a problem. I need a system that will backup and store whatever data I upload indefinitely. If I want to delete something, I will do that manually. This way, I don't need to continuously buy new external hard-drives.
 
AMAZON has just introduced unlimited cloud storage for $60 per year. Job Done

Amazon Cloud Drive
Holy crap! I'm gonna have to try that.

Amazon has a relatively cheap cloud but the problem is the upload times.
Same with every service I've investigated.

Have you checked what your ISP upload cap is?

When i lived in the country my upload was capped at 1 MBPS. Sometimes i had to upload videos to a school server that would take roughly 30 min to upload and another 20 to process.

I now live in toledo and pay for double the upload 5 MBPS. I'm much happier with life.

Of course if i upload from work the throttling is less. Thank you academic freedom :)
 
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
AMAZON has just introduced unlimited cloud storage for $60 per year. Job Done

Amazon Cloud Drive
Holy crap! I'm gonna have to try that.

Amazon has a relatively cheap cloud but the problem is the upload times.
Same with every service I've investigated.

Have you checked what your ISP upload cap is?

When i lived in the country my upload was capped at 1 MBPS. Sometimes i had to upload videos to a school server that would take roughly 30 min to upload and another 20 to process.

I now live in toledo and pay for double the upload 5 MBPS. I'm much happier with life.

Of course if i upload from work the throttling is less. Thank you academic freedom :)
Hi qleak,

Good point about the upload speed, I have no clue. Considering how much I want to upload, it may behoove me to check.
 
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Hi all,

So, I've started on the Amazon service, but I'm finding that it's a little on the "dumb" side (or maybe that's me).
I can't upload in the background, and I can't upload folders. Only files. This doesn't help me, as I've got specific photography categories and customer files that can't be uploaded into one humongous folder.
It looks like I'm going to have to carry on trying to figure this out.
Any other ideas floating around there?
 
Thanks so much everyone, the Amazon service does look good, and I'll also look into the BackBlaze (thanks Buster).
The funny thing is I looked into the Amazon service in the beginning of the week, but they didn't have that plan available the. It must be brand new (or I didn't look well enough).
I'll report back on what I use, and let you ll know how it works for me.

Thanks again, for all the input and have a great weekend.

Bruce
Looking into BackBlaze shows me a slight problem,
As per BackBlaze Online Backup of All Your Data Backblaze
Backblaze will keep versions of a file that changes for up to 30 days. However, Backblaze is not designed as an additional storage system when you run out of space. Backblaze mirrors your drive. If you delete your data, it will be deleted from Backblaze after 30 days.
This may create a problem. I need a system that will backup and store whatever data I upload indefinitely. If I want to delete something, I will do that manually. This way, I don't need to continuously buy new external hard-drives.
From my research, a service that offers that level of retention, that doesn't require the files to also live on the home machine, is going to cost considerably more. Those kinds of "storage" solutions, as opposed to "backup" solutions, are covered by services like DropBox.

As an example, Dropbox allows up to 2GB for free. Not enough for me (I have 15TB and growing). For $9.99 per month, I could get up to 1TB of space for storage. Still not enough for me. Beyond that, I'd have to go with a Business account, which is UNLIMITED storage. Cost: $15 per month per user, with a minimum of 5 users = $75 per month = $900 per year. That's just more than I'm willing to pay.

At those kinds of prices, it's far less expensive to simply buy more hard drives. The thing that the cloud backup/storage solutions offer to me that local drives don't is insurance against local catastrophe, and by that I mean theft, fire, tornado, etc. - something that takes out ALL my local hard drives in a way that's unrecoverable. I could fill them and take them to my sister's, but the same tornado could wipe her place out as well, unlikely as that is. Or I could pay to store them in a bank safety deposit box, sure. Anything off-site from me though means that I don't have ready access to them when I want it, making it a pain in the behind to work with them.

I'm considering the idea that if I can find 4 other local friends and family who are interested in having unlimited storage, and are reliable enough to participate with me, I could set up the business account, and collect $15 from each of them per month to make it happen. If I felt particularly entrepreneurial, I suppose I could charge them each $20 per month, get my storage for free, and pocket the extra $5 per month as an administrative fee (which likely violates the terms of service with the service, so you wouldn't want to try to go large scale with it and start trying to recruit hundreds of users and make a business of it). Other than that, I just don't see it as a viable solution for me, personally.

If anyone knows of a reasonably priced unlimited "Storage" solution for a single user though, I would LOVE to find out about it, because that would be the ultimate solution for me.
 
AMAZON has just introduced unlimited cloud storage for $60 per year. Job Done

Amazon Cloud Drive
Holy crap! I'm gonna have to try that.

Amazon has a relatively cheap cloud but the problem is the upload times.
Same with every service I've investigated.

Have you checked what your ISP upload cap is?

When i lived in the country my upload was capped at 1 MBPS. Sometimes i had to upload videos to a school server that would take roughly 30 min to upload and another 20 to process.

I now live in toledo and pay for double the upload 5 MBPS. I'm much happier with life.

Of course if i upload from work the throttling is less. Thank you academic freedom :)
Hi qleak,

Good point about the upload speed, I have no clue. Considering how much I want to upload, it may behoove me to check.

You can usually deduce your max upload speed by visiting speedtest.net i think ookla or some crap like that owns it now.
 
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
AMAZON has just introduced unlimited cloud storage for $60 per year. Job Done

Amazon Cloud Drive
Holy crap! I'm gonna have to try that.

Amazon has a relatively cheap cloud but the problem is the upload times.
Same with every service I've investigated.

Have you checked what your ISP upload cap is?

When i lived in the country my upload was capped at 1 MBPS. Sometimes i had to upload videos to a school server that would take roughly 30 min to upload and another 20 to process.

I now live in toledo and pay for double the upload 5 MBPS. I'm much happier with life.

Of course if i upload from work the throttling is less. Thank you academic freedom :)
Hi qleak,

Good point about the upload speed, I have no clue. Considering how much I want to upload, it may behoove me to check.

You can usually deduce your max upload speed by visiting speedtest.net i think ookla or some crap like that owns it now.
 

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