Not really directly related to photography (so not sure if this is the right place - so mods, probably just move to a more appropriate forum as you see fit)...

As our photo-catalog grows, back-up systems become more and more important. For me, having a Drobo here and storing in a DVD somewhere might not be enough. I have been considering storing my photos in some sort of "Cloud". Right now, I'm using:

www.backblaze.com (http://www.backblaze.com) for $5.00/month, I think its the cheapest out there (unless there are others there you guys can suggest).

Its kinda easy and services is kept to a minimal. However, I want to hear what you guys are using for your Cloud Storage needs.

Btw, for those guys not doing this, I advise you to do so. You'll regret it sooner or later. :)

There are many online storage sites available, actually the first one I tried was Carbonite when I saw it in the review section of one of the older DPP issues... They work fine, and the cost is minimal if you consider how much you spend on HDD and DVD (plus its storage). I'm getting tired of seeing 4 HDD on my desk and 2 more in my cabinet actually... The thing that irks me with all of these services so far is they will only sync with a local drive and not an external drive, but your link looks like it can backup an external mapped drive as well, looks good... Might give it a try next month, I'm running out of dvd storage anyway.

Are you a member yet? How is it?

currently I have 2 accounts in Windows Live Skydrive service (both with 25GB of storage). I got some photos uploaded there for back-up, though my gripe is that I'm only limited to 50MB files (nothing more than that).

I'd nitpick for it's a bit untidy interface and slow upload. That's the price of being free i guess.

I'm interested right now with this Home Group set-up on Windows 7 (have one of my PCs serve as a shared storage server, simpler than having a Home Server up and running), though I'm still in the process of updating all the PCs here at home with my legally obtained copies of it. Else, I'll go and get one of Jerry's QNAP devices :D (as long as I get to save for them)

There are many online storage sites available, actually the first one I tried was Carbonite when I saw it in the review section of one of the older DPP issues... They work fine, and the cost is minimal if you consider how much you spend on HDD and DVD (plus its storage). I'm getting tired of seeing 4 HDD on my desk and 2 more in my cabinet actually... The thing that irks me with all of these services so far is they will only sync with a local drive and not an external drive, but your link looks like it can backup an external mapped drive as well, looks good... Might give it a try next month, I'm running out of dvd storage anyway.

Are you a member yet? How is it?

Yup! I'm already a member. Some plus points I have already seen are:
- Yes, it can synch with any drive (external or internal - even with USB flashdisk)
- No limit on capacity - for 5usd/month having limitless capacity is a gem
- There's just a little widget on your computer that does the automatic back-up and upload to their datacenter. No need to set-up everything on a daily basis.

As for the negatives:
- Initial synch takes days or even weeks - but once it reaches a fully synch point, your daily synch would be very fast.
- You cannot do an online recovery, but they send you in zip files, and it takes virtually forever to download Terrabytes of data
- You can request for DVD or USB drive copy, but they kinda charge you quite heftily on the disks and the freight charges (via Fedex)

currently I have 2 accounts in Windows Live Skydrive service (both with 25GB of storage). I got some photos uploaded there for back-up, though my gripe is that I'm only limited to 50MB files (nothing more than that).

I'd nitpick for it's a bit untidy interface and slow upload. That's the price of being free i guess.

I'm interested right now with this Home Group set-up on Windows 7 (have one of my PCs serve as a shared storage server, simpler than having a Home Server up and running), though I'm still in the process of updating all the PCs here at home with my legally obtained copies of it. Else, I'll go and get one of Jerry's QNAP devices :D (as long as I get to save for them)

I heard/read a several negative comments with Skydrive. I'll probably check them out and see for myself. Thanks for the reply!

Thanks Melvs... I can live with the slow initial upload, that'd be expected, but the download part is a bit worrying. Do they allow you to select which cluster of data to be zipped and downloaded or does it always have to be done as a whole backup download?

David, Melvin, just wanna update with you guys about online storage backup. I'm seriously considering subscribing to this service as well with the recent Ondoy tragedy here in the Philippines.

Even if you have offline/external backups, if they're located in a single physical location then your data is still not secure...

Joseph: Totally... actually, unless your office is in a corporate building in the CBD areas, they're not safe from flooding/fire either hehe.

Melvs: Any updates?

Joseph: Totally... actually, unless your office is in a corporate building in the CBD areas, they're not safe from flooding/fire either hehe.

Melvs: Any updates?

I followed the Nat Geo Field Photography guide and coming from the Nat Geo Pros, getting an offsite storage is an investment indeed, as they can have back-ups of your photos :D

I had so far been happy with Smugmug even on an standard account only (up to 12MB / pic only). There are no free accounts though aside from trial ones and the standard account costs $40/year.

So far I was able to upload and download my photos with ease, I had no problems with bandwidth, it could handle my 1mbps uploads which was my upload speed cap. They seem to store some data at Amazon's S3 service and there are backup (DVD) options as well although I haven't tried that yet.

What sold me was their gallery software. I often share tons of links to friends and relatives to my different galleries. It was so much easier there and I am getting no complaints about them not being able to view my photos.

http://www.smugmug.com/