Thinking About On Line Storage

[Friar]

Hi Guys,

Although I have an external 500gb drive which I back up all my stuff to periodically, I am thinking about taking an on-line back up account, (co-incidentally, I read somewhere recently that your data is not safe until you have it in three separate places! )

Does any one have any experience of these or can provide suggestions for a host?

I am thinking of an annual subscription rather than monthly payments.

Cheers

Friar

[B16Enk]

First question has got to be:

How much data?

If it is less than, say, 5GB then you could use Gmail and mail the important stuff to your self.

(I will be using GMail for the Dogz email accounts and hope to make the switch this weekend once I have contacted all current users).

I have used Humyo Online File Storage & Backup in the past, they have a free 10GB account and it is a well thought out service, with the ability to share data/files or enforce strict privacy.

[Friar]

Taking everyone's folders into account with pictures and music its currently about 30GB

...Just had a look at that site Roger, 100gb for £50 a year. Looks promising...

[Snacko]

When I worked at one of my first jobs at an Insurance agency, I worked on a project called Disaster Recovery. Each system had to have a recovery plan. Software and data was backed up daily and stored off site with a company that had underground vaults. I think they were in the desert somewhere in a cave. Really. So, 3 copies, or whatever, it's all how badly you want to cover your ass. To be really safe I would say store it on separate planets when that become available.

[B16Enk]

Taking everyone's folders into account with pictures and music its currently about 30GB

...Just had a look at that site Roger, 100gb for £50 a year. Looks promising...

If you are canny you only need one account, use network file sharing and synch a central repository

[GreyKnight]

Friar,

I use dropbox.com and it comes with 2GB free and higher limits you have to pay for, check 'em out..

https://www.dropbox.com/pricing

You can pay yearly too, if interested, let me know, as I can send you a link and an extra 250MB as a referral.

Good thing is you can install a small bit of software on every PC you use. So you can synchronise you data on numerous PCs. I have it on my home PC and work PC.

[Jabo]

Although these things are great in principle, unless you have a good upstream connection, upload times tend to be prohibitive. I've tried a couple of alternative services to the ones mentioned before, and always given up before having much more than a fraction uploaded. Eight hours per 500MB equals about 1600 hours (66 days - continuous) for the photos, another 1600 for the music - compared to four hours for copying the whole shooting match to an external HDD with encryption and then an hour across Coventry to drop it off in my mates fire safe and have a quick coffee. Another four hours to make a local copy and voila.

I'd definitely run Speedtest to get an idea of how long it'll take to transfer your 30GB Col, I'm moving a lot more data, but 30GB uploaded is still quite a lot.

Hmm, I'm not on a downer over the whole online storage concept, I just feel that if you're storing a lot, multiple local copies are a better bet.

Jabo

[JensenPark]

doesn't google offer this for free?

[Friar]

On reflection, it would probably be a better option to buy another external hard drive and take it work and leave it there, just bring it home, say, at weekends to update.

Thanks for the input anyway guys, much appreciated.

Friar

[B16Enk]

On reflection, it would probably be a better option to buy another external hard drive and take it work and leave it there, just bring it home, say, at weekends to update.

Thanks for the input anyway guys, much appreciated.

Friar

Good decision there Colin, Nick made a very good point (and I upped his post rep for it ) earlier about upstream speed.