[RGlasel]

You pick the disaster you consider the worst case. A local fire is different than a section of your state falling into the sea after an earthquake, which again is different than the Yosemite Caldera destroying the central USA. Of course, disasters that aren't personally survivable may not matter unless one is an international corporation.

Loss of RAW photographs (regardless of the reason) is seldom a matter of life and death. As long as a single processed copy of the image exists, whatever value that image has is still mostly intact (other than what it is worth to the photographer to be able to repeat the editing process ad infinitum). If your digital files have monetary value, the question you need to ask yourself is whether that value is better perserved in a virtual vault on a server that you don't control, that can be accessed by millions of people 24/7, or on physical media in your basement, office or locked vault? The monetary value can always be insured, regardless of where you store your files, but it is much easier to get business insurance to cover damage to hard drives from natural disasters than to get insurance against virtual cloud disasters.


As for the reliability of the physical media, you have more control over that (by the quality of the media used and how often you check it for errors or replace it) than you do over the cloud service. The two main risks to cloud backup are software failure (unplanned human error) and attack from malicious actors (much like putting $1 billion on deposit in a box in the middle of Times Square, with nothing but mall security guards controlling who gets to try to open the combination lock). Which is more likely to happen first, the box disappears into a hole in the earth's crust or gets hit by an asteroid, or someone tries to blow it up to make headlines?

[BruceBanner]

I would still keep a local copy, and in fact ALL my photos (other than the one stars) are kept on external drives that can be easily carried to another computer if I wish (and have) and NOT on internal storage. I think it would be something you might regret if your only copy of a photo exists "in the cloud".

I know there are those prosumer shooters who use Adobe LR cloud as their photo repository and might only have a few special images if anything stored locally. I wouldn't even consider that myself.

I never thought about speed, but just tried a run and I get 10-15 mbyte/s upload (~100 mbit), and I'm in Sweden while their servers are in the US as I understand it, but I think that may be my ISP upload limit so perhaps not a backblaze limit. But since that just uses some disk and network and no cpu and could basically be "always on" if you wanted to, even while editing photos without interfering much with performance since it doesn't use a lot CPU, GPU or RAM, so I don't think the upload speed should be an issue anyhow?

Regarding what to backup, as I mentioned, with the commandline tool and b2 storage (and not the "whole computer backup"-plan) you can easily specify what to backup and not to further limit whats uploaded. The computer-backup has some build-in restrictions on temporary files, application files etc, so you can't restore a computer installation with OS and all from it, just the data. In my case I just run

b2 sync --dryRun --compareThreshold 1 [path to my photo storage]

to sync see what will be uploaded from the photo raw drive, no actual transfer, and then

b2 sync --compareThreshold 1 [path to my photo storage]

to actually to the sync, but there are many options and details that allow for customization and you can run this on a schedule in windows or linux at least (probably in macos too). The comparethreshold-part is just because linux uses different precision of file datetimes compared to windows, and I use both, so maybe not necessary in your case.

As for security as someone mentioned, you can either encrypt it yourself before uploading, or they also have support for you to provide/configure your own encryption key locally so that Backblaze themselves can't decrypt your data even if CIA tried to force them =).

Edit: About uploads/plan; since you define what to upload or not with b2, and it's all "syncing" and not uploading all the data every time, I don't see how you can get a full cloud backup using any less data no matter what solution you use? (Sure the whole-computer-plan from backblaze will backup more, but no need to use that). Or what you could do if willing to spend the time and effort you could try to compress raws using 7zip or so before uploading, but that won't gain much when dealing with raw files and also not worth it I think, since youre not doing that today? (nobody is probably..). But all in all, even if you just get 0.5 MB/s, leaving the computer on overnight would solve that, so the upload speed shouldn't be an issue regardless of plan I think. (if there's a cap on total upload in the plabn there might be issues, but that would go for any cloud backup regardless, and be more related to what you upload rather than to which cloud...)

Interesting. It does sound like backblaze could do what I want. Set up just a couple of folders for it to watch and sync (a personal folder and work/photos). My issue with cloud stuff (in the past) has been that my internet gets stuffed as soon as it's syncing. Yes CPU and RAM are ok, but what use is that if you can't browse a site lol. So either I do the old school thing and sync at night only or have the ability to pause the sync in the day time or at least cap its speed so it's not wholly taking a gazillion years to render websites.

Can backblaze easily do that from a taskbar or something/pause or change upload speed? My speed will be far less anyway, 3-10mb/s...

I wouldn't use SSD drives for backup, because of the write limitations...

I have opted for a NAS, after a disk overwrite (the vendor said the disk bay was hot swappable... It was not )

So I have now a WD my cloud EX2 ($300) and a WD my cloud EX2 Ultra ($600) NASes. One with 2x1 TB mirrored WD Red drives, which are full now, and the Ultra with 2x4 TB.

I put them in the cellar with a 1 Gb network cable connection. So now I can backup every evening, it takes a few minutes, and all my photos are accessible, for me alone, in the whole world, if I need it.

I am also planning to buy a surge protector so the NASes could safely be shut down.

NAS still means at home tho doesn't it? I must have an off site solution, no question about it...

If your primary concern is loss of data through a home fire or other catastrophe, keeping a backup drive off-site is a much simpler solution than trying to backup your files on a cloud service. I used to do that with a drive I kept at work, but since I retired, I no longer have that option, so my solution is to keep a drive with a relative.

On the matter of SSDs versus HDDs, I recently tried to find a drive to replace the one in my daughter’s MacBook Pro, and was surprised to see that they are getting harder to obtain, even though they’re still available via eBay and the like. I opted for buying an SSD from a local store, which wasn’t that much more expensive than its HDD equivalent. As for rewrite limits, HDDs fail too, but using an SSD as a backup is probably fine, as long as you aren’t backing up every hour or so.

Nearest relative is on the other side of the world, my wife contracts (so the office she uses is not permanent), my other job has no office... really there is no local off site, and I prefer not to use my friends for stuff like that (I mean I catch up with different friends maybe once a month, too large a delay between hdd swaps etc).

Cloud definitely is the way to go, it's just selecting the right provider...

With SSD's vs HDD's in terms of writing, I take it doing stuff like incremental backups makes no difference? Like... if writing to only new sectors as opposed to wiping and backing up all over again, is that a different to the longevity of a SSD?

Personally I think the concerns about write limitations is far overblown. Actual testing has shown the real life longevity is several times the stated ones.
https://www.ontrack.com/blog/2018/02/07/how-long-do-ssds-really-last/

Cool!

I think the surest, lowest tech way are Week A, Week B USB hard drives that your data's synced to.

Each you bring home and attach to the computer in alternate weeks while the other leaves with you the next morning to spend 7 days at your workplace.

If you're real paranoid ("Won't they be together at home one night of the week?") you get a Week C hard drive. Having that Week C one at work fixes that, but of course it's now up to two weeks behind in its files list - unless you sync to both Week A and Week B first, then it's back to one week.

Sadly not viable to me (read above).

[rawr]

Sadly not viable to me (read above).

But always keeping a 4TB, USB 3 powered compact 2.5 inch Seagate or LaCie portable HDD in your camera bag (hence with you and safe wherever you go) remains a simple and perfectly doable backup option. They are light, relatively durable, inexpensive, tiny and can store a heap. I have a 4TB one in my camera bag as backup whenever I leave the house, and it fits all the images I have, plus my LR catalogue and other data. It is updated on my PC every evening by Syncback Free, which picks up the latest images I've added to the PC. And USB 3 is faster than any cloud service.

[BruceBanner]

But always keeping a 4TB, USB 3 powered compact 2.5 inch Seagate or LaCie portable HDD in your camera bag (hence with you and safe wherever you go) remains a simple and perfectly doable backup option. They are light, relatively durable, inexpensive, tiny and can store a heap. I have a 4TB one in my camera bag as backup whenever I leave the house, and it fits all the images I have, plus my LR catalogue and other data. It is updated on my PC every evening by Syncback Free, which picks up the latest images I've added to the PC. And USB 3 is faster than any cloud service.

^ This is really my only other alternative, it's just a case of having to change my habits. I do lots of little 'jobs' and car runs (I'm like a taxi these days ferrying my kids back and forth from school and extracurricular activities!), typically I grab phone and keys and just leave the house. I do have a handbag... sorry... 'Manbag' (it's actually a crumpler camera bag) that I often take on longer outings. I guess I perhaps just need to get more into the habit of taking that with me at all times (thus having room for a small backup drive) etc.

At this point in time it's very much a case of either spending money on a cloud service, or spending it on a portable SSD.

4TB would be overkill, but a 1-2TB should be enough.

[rawr]

4TB would be overkill, but a 1-2TB should be enough.

2TB portable HDD from JB or Officeworks are cheap, maybe less than $100. I have a portable Toshiba 4TB that cost me $147 from Officeworks, and a Seagate one too that cost about the same a while ago.

LaCie and Adata have 'tough' portable HDD models, which have MIL grade drop protection, weather sealing etc but as the portable drive lives in my camera bag it will get the same care I give to my camera gear, so I feel I don't need the 'tough' models.

SSD is nice, more resistant to physical vibration, shock and quicker too, and for up to 1TB not crazy expensive, but HDD for backup still leads for price/performance.

[BruceBanner]

2TB portable HDD from JB or Officeworks are cheap, maybe less than $100. I have a portable Toshiba 4TB that cost me $147 from Officeworks, and a Seagate one too that cost about the same a while ago.

LaCie and Adata have 'tough' portable HDD models, which have MIL grade drop protection, weather sealing etc but as the portable drive lives in my camera bag it will get the same care I give to my camera gear, so I feel I don't need the 'tough' models.

SSD is nice, more resistant to physical vibration, shock and quicker too, and for up to 1TB not crazy expensive, but HDD for backup still leads for price/performance.

Yeh yer right, I mean I think if it lives in a camera bag with padding then I don't need the rugged shock protection stuff so much, just a slim thing that won't occupy much space. Even perhaps something like this; https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Hard-Drives-&-SSDs/External-Portable-Dri...vJrBoC8t_w_wcB

[rawr]

Even perhaps something like this

Yeah, that's got a 3 year warranty, and a 2 year data recovery service too, I note. It's certainly pocketable as well, which means if need be your data could routinely go with you everywhere, camera bag optional.

Another option is to buy a few 256GB or 512GB micro-SD cards for your image backup needs, add more as needed, and just carry them around in your wallet. Samsung has 256GB micro-SD's for about $100, 512GB for $200. Won't be long before 1 or 2TB micro-SD's become very cheap too.

[BruceBanner]

Yeah, that's got a 3 year warranty, and a 2 year data recovery service too, I note. It's certainly pocketable as well, which means if need be your data could routinely go with you everywhere, camera bag optional.

Another option is to buy a few 256GB or 512GB micro-SD cards for your image backup needs, add more as needed, and just carry them around in your wallet. Samsung has 256GB micro-SD's for about $100, 512GB for $200. Won't be long before 1 or 2TB micro-SD's become very cheap too.

Yeah and that's why I was thinking about a new phone entirely. A S10+ 512gb with a 512gb micro inside. Expensive but then very very portable (like... pretty much non existent portable ). I just don't think we're quite there yet for affordability, it is way cheaper to get one of those aforementioned drives, or you know... spend $90/year on 1-2tb cloud service.

---------- Post added 06-09-19 at 02:28 PM ----------

Yeah, that's got a 3 year warranty, and a 2 year data recovery service too, I note. It's certainly pocketable as well, which means if need be your data could routinely go with you everywhere, camera bag optional.

Another option is to buy a few 256GB or 512GB micro-SD cards for your image backup needs, add more as needed, and just carry them around in your wallet. Samsung has 256GB micro-SD's for about $100, 512GB for $200. Won't be long before 1 or 2TB micro-SD's become very cheap too.

Samsung T3 2TB Portable SSD USB 3.1 Type C MU-PT2T0BWW | shopping express online

$399AUD tonight at 9pm. hmm...

What's the difference between T5 and T3 drives, they seem to have a few like this...

[rawr]

What's the difference between T5 and T3 drives

[Infographic] Portable Solid-State Drive Spec Comparison: T3 vs. T5 – Samsung Global Newsroom
That was easy.

[MD Optofonik]

How about something to suit your needs that provides benefits like these:

• No subscription fees.
• No market force influences.
• No data breaches.
• No down time for "routine maintenance" (unless you decide).
• No loss of access due to internet service or electrical outages.
• No need for upgrading or interface "improvements".
• Simple.
• Reliable.
• Proven technology.

Wait for it...


A fire and waterproof safe designed for data storage hardware.

You can even set up an NAS station inside it; when in use the safe is open and hard drives connected. When backups are complete, the NAS station is disconnected, the safe is closed, and locked.

Don't be seduced by technology. There are simpler ways, proven reliable over time, to accomplish many of the things people are lured into using "latest technology" for.

[BruceBanner]

Yeah, that's got a 3 year warranty, and a 2 year data recovery service too, I note. It's certainly pocketable as well, which means if need be your data could routinely go with you everywhere, camera bag optional.

Another option is to buy a few 256GB or 512GB micro-SD cards for your image backup needs, add more as needed, and just carry them around in your wallet. Samsung has 256GB micro-SD's for about $100, 512GB for $200. Won't be long before 1 or 2TB micro-SD's become very cheap too.

How about something to suit your needs that provides benefits like these:

• No subscription fees.
• No market force influences.
• No data breaches.
• No down time for "routine maintenance" (unless you decide).
• No loss of access due to internet service or electrical outages.
• No need for upgrading or interface "improvements".
• Simple.
• Reliable.
• Proven technology.

Wait for it...


A fire and waterproof safe designed for data storage hardware.

You can even set up an NAS station inside it; when in use the safe is open and hard drives connected. When backups are complete, the NAS station is disconnected, the safe is closed, and locked.

Don't be seduced by technology. There are simpler ways, proven reliable over time, to accomplish many of the things people are lured into using "latest technology" for.

Sadly no safe on earth will provide a guarantee of safe data on drive inside such a safe, and science says the likelihood of your drive being ok is not good from an event is not favourable (I looked into this a couple years back). I guess bushfires are devastating, I mean they boil swimming pools and water tanks (people have tried to stay and defend properties and boil alive in such drastic last minute attempts at survival

So yeah, having all your backups under one location is just a bad risk, you must get offsite to be very sure, and lets say even if you could get a safe that guaranteed safety, it's cost would be absolutely phenomenal compared to a cloud service...

[MD Optofonik]

Sadly no safe on earth will provide a guarantee of safe data on drive inside such a safe, and science says the likelihood of your drive being ok is not good from an event is not favourable (I looked into this a couple years back). I guess bushfires are devastating, I mean they boil swimming pools and water tanks (people have tried to stay and defend properties and boil alive in such drastic last minute attempts at survival

So yeah, having all your backups under one location is just a bad risk, you must get offsite to be very sure, and lets say even if you could get a safe that guaranteed safety, it's cost would be absolutely phenomenal compared to a cloud service...

Well, that's disappointing. I would have hoped 1700°F would be adequate. I'm just not a fan of the cloud for myriad reasons.

[clackers]

Keep the backup SSD in your car if you like, you can encrypt the contents if that worries you.

[Fenwoodian]

.
I've used both cloud storage for backup and removable hard drives for years.

I received an email from Dropbox (my current cloud backup service). They said that they were pleased to announce that starting with my next renewal in 3 weeks, I'll be getting 2TB of cloud storage for just $120 a year!

Well that's not a deal because for the last few years I've paid them $99 a year for that same 2TB of storage. I sent them an email a week ago asking that they explain the email. No response.

That was the last straw - I'm done with cloud storage. Besides, it takes so long to upload my files that it's much quicker to just copy them to my 4 different removable hard drives, and store them in different locations (including a bank safe deposit box).

[MarkJerling]

I'm just not a fan of the cloud for myriad reasons.

I'm a fan of the cloud for a few reasons:

1. It works. Every time.
2. It's cheap.
3. It's off-site.
4. It's as secure as it needs to be.
5. It's not subject to hardware failures.
6. It's not subject to "I forgot to back up".
7. And lastly, I can access my data backup from anywhere, on any device, provided I have an internet connection.