Storage on cloud

[Bumble]

I've been looking at using cloud as another storage option.

At the moment I have files stored on portable hard drives, with a dupicate of my most precious files stored away from the house and a few on discs as well.

The main problem I have with this is remembering to back up the hard drives, particularly the one that I keep elsewhere. The attraction of using cloud for me would be even if the house burnt down, as long as I remembered the password I could retrieve the files anywhere/anytime.

Alot of the different firms that offer such storage are quite expensive or offer too little space to be worthwhile but I came across a link tonight that I thought might be worth a go.

ADrive.com – Compare Our Storage & Backup Plans

Has anyone used this or similar, and are there any pitfalls I should be looking out for?

[homer2067]

Wouldnt it be cheaper to buy 1TB hd`s instead? Store one in someone elses home connected to the net you could access this drive by mapping a network drive in windows? just idea>>>>>>>>>

[Hali]

I don't know anything about Cloud, but I guess its the same as when you're using a 3rd party for any service...
How confident are you that you will get the service you're paying for?
What happens if the company goes down the pan - will you still be able to retrieve your files?
How well do they protect your data from access by third parties?
Do they really run their own back up systems well - i.e. what are the chances of them loosing your data?

Have to say that I'm always slightly supsicious of someone able to offer a service substantially cheaper than their competitors. If they are much, much cheaper than all the others, I would really be wanting to understand how they can afford to do it - i.e. are the others just creaming too much off or is the lower pricing because they are cutting corners (or will they get your business and then hike the costs up)?

[Bumble]

I like your idea homer. At the moment I have a hard drive stored at my daughters house and when I babysit I take my laptop and hard drive and transfer files over (when I remember). Setting it up to work from home would be a better idea. I dont' keep a lot of photos, I keep most for a month then bin them so sending over the ones I want to keep wouldn't be too big a job.

I've heard a lot of conflicting thoughts on the cloud system. The pro side saying that in a few years laptops as we know them will be obsolete and we will just have terminals from which we access the cloud for all our files software etc. The anti side saying it will never get off the ground and always be to prone to failures and hacking.

I think for now I'm going to upload a few non important files and see what happens.

[Nizwa29]

The cloud can have some advantages and is starting to be used by large companies and corporations, but if you are thinking of using it for storage of large RAW files then also consider your internet uplink speed and check what your limits are for up/down loads as you may well chew up significant Mb / Gbs of data. Many internet connections will have someting in the region of 8 - 12 Mbs download but only 0.8 - 1.4 Mbs upload speed.

[Bumble]

Fortunately (in this case) I only rarely get the chance to shoot in Raw, most of the time fps is my priority so the files aren't so big, but it was well worth mentioning. And Raw file I do have can stay on the hard drives and if I find that cloud is worth using I can send a jpeg copy there.

[Alex]

Think I would rather go down Davids road Barbara. You can buy two 1TB for about £60 each instead of £85 a month. Would be good if it automatically FTP the files to it from a set folder in case you forgot, but it's a lot of money just to do it manually.

[SpeedboaT]

Most modern motherboards have Raid options on them, and personally i would look to mirror the (1TB or greater) drives. I believe you can buy an external Raid box for reasonable money nowadays, if you want a portable solution or if you are using a laptop.

I stand to be corrected on this, but i believe that you use a minimum of two identical drives, lets say 2 x 1TB drives that are mirrored. Your storage capacity is only 1TB, but as the data is copied to drive A it gets mirrored to drive B. You therefore have two identical drives and built in redundancy.

A lot of units also have a removable drive enclosure, so you could theoretically use three 1TB drives in your backup process, and every month remove one drive and store it somewhere safely, replacing it with the other unit. The other unit will "catch up" with the data on drive A and start to mirror normally thereafter; should you experience a mass failure of both Raid drives, fire, flood or even my wife sitting on the unit the other drive (safely stored) is still available.

Regards

Craig

[Roy]

I bought an empty Netgear ReadyNas which has 4 drive bays. I installed 4x2TB drives as a RAID set which gives me about 5.6TB of protected storage. It has a GB-E connection and I use it for system backups. Until I upgraded to Lion I also used it with Time Machine for an iMac - but Lion broke that feature. Total cost was around £400. I would not describe the ReadyNas as portable although you could move it around it you really wanted to - but it's very much intended as a fit and leave piece of kit.

I also have an older home-built PC which has 4x1.5TB internal drives on a motherboard RAID controller set up as a mirrored unit giving 3TB of protected storage. It no longer has a keyboard/mouse/monior attached - I only use it via RDP.

There are some nice mirrored external units offering 1-2TB for between £150-200 which are highly portable though - depends on your priorities I guess.

Personally, I would not put large (1GB+) volumes of data on cloud storage - primarily because of the transfer times but also because of cost and security as secondary considerations.

[CzWotzit]

I have recently bought a drobo FS box and is worth looking at but it is a bit expensive as you have to buy (or already have) the disks to put in it. It attaches to my router and is a self contained file server that manages your data storage on a raid system. You do NOT need any technical knowledge to set it up because it is all automatic (though if you want you can alter the setup at a later date) I used the sata disks from my external drives to put in it and then added two more. In my opinion its a great investment and safeguards my data.

I would visit their site - just google Drobo FS

Andre