Backup!!

Early in 2009 I reviewed several online backup services and my conclusion was that if you want a hassle free solution the best way was to use dropbox for the active documents you are working on, as you have online versioning, local copies in your computers and everything is transparently synchronised. They give you 2Gb for free and if you do need more, then space with them is not cheap. For 50Gb (next step) is $10 per month, which with Google for $5 a year, you have 20Gb. Petty that we are still waiting for a Gdrive…

The other one that I chose was Backblaze. For $5 a month you can backup one computer to the cloud.

I emphasized that it is very important to keep backups in a different location, and that is why I took a look to backblaze, carbonite, mozy, etc…

Now, there is another player that I either forgot or that it is new. I don’t know.

Also there are some remarks I want to make.

First remark is that if you have lot of storage in use, these online backup solutions might not be good. It takes ages to upload everything and I don’t want to imagine what happens if you happen to need the whole thing, not just a file you deleted.

Some, for a fee, can send you a HD. This is good. Some also, for the first backup they send you an HD you copy it locally and you send it to them. This could be a good option.

Crashplan

The newcomer is crashplan. It is by far my first choice. Let me tell you why.

Crashplan does this: they can send you a hard disc, you copy whatever you want, you send it and voila. Same for restoring.

Of course you have a software in your Mac, Pc or even Linux to sync with crashplan servers.

The great thing is that for as little as $3.5 a month you can back up everything you have. And for $5 you can backup everything you have in your house!! including all computers, external disks and NAS. Everything for as little as $5 a month.

Now, the software you use, which is great has something that nobody else has. You can back up for FREE from one computer to another. So you install crashplan in your laptop for free and you back up to your desktop computer. All this peer to peer backup is free and hassle free. Of course both computers should run the software. Ah, and this include your computeres or your friend’s. You can back up your laptop to your mum’s computer in the other side of the world if you wish.

For me this is the winner by far.

I tested it. You have 30 days trial to upload to crashplan unlimited data. I selected my two photo folders and starting backup from my mediacenter. Both folders have around 250Gb. Well the estimated time was something like 4 months. Not a solution for me then.

Also I cannot backup this to any other computer. I would eat my mum’s hard disk if I do so.

I do have backups at home but offsite backups is something I still don’t have (except for the 45.000 photos in flickr). At home though every computer has raid 0 (except the mac, but it has timemachine on a computer with raid mirror)

For me the solution is a NAS that rsyncs with another NAS in a different location. The first backup can be done at the same place then you just sync changes. If your house is lost in an earthquake then you can always mail the other copy.

This is a far more expensive solution, but it is the one I am choosing. The winner for that is Synology DS-1010+, but this is another post….

Back up your photos in the cloud: Flickr or Picasaweb?

Photography is one of my passions. I have http://norai.net with some nice photos that I don’t actually update very often just because it requires and effort of, opening Lightroom in my mac, connect to the photo folder in my media centre, edit those that I think can go to the web, export them to 800px upload them… bla bla…

It is a petty because I have tons of photos. It is a petty also that those that I have in norai I have not a full size copy of them as I just did it for the web…

I have a very peculiar workflow for photos. My media server with 2x2Tb HDs has about 150Gb of Jpegs and 150Gb of Raws.

When I take a photo with my nikon d300 I take it in Raw (only for the past couple of years), then I save it in a Photos Raw folder with the date-event folder. Then I process them with DxO which generates a Jpeg with the corrected noise, lens distortion and so. I move the jpgs to a folder named the same in a Photos folder.

Picasa is the program I use in the media centre to  see the photos.

On the other hand, the photos I take with my iPhone are in my Mac using iPhoto. I don’t know why… but I take a lot of photos with the iPhone.

Up to now I used to upload the Jpgs to my servers downstairs where I have Gallery2 from menalto. It is good, but videos are not great and again it is here and I am trying to move away from depending on my server.

Now I was considering to have an offsite copy of all my photos. I could go for something like backblaze (or mozy, though I prefere the first), pay $5 per month and forget, or go for an online cloud gallery. This backup solutions are good. Backblaze lets you back up usb drives connected to a machine, even if they are not always connected. I have the Media server with 2Tb and then it has 1Tb USB drive and a 500Mb one… so it would be a good option… but the stuff I really need is in my mac (320Gb) which backs up to a TimeMachine in the Linux Server….

The two major players are Flickr and Picasaweb. Sure you have Smugmug which is the one that looks the best and others such as expono, snapixel.

For me the ideal would be picasaweb basically because I don’t care about the community (where flickr is strong) and it is just a switch in picasa to have everything sync with the web. If I work on the face tags or locations, everything is happily synchronised. In addition to this I like the fact that I can keep my folder structure in the media server and picasa will just be a layer to display it and synchronise it with the web.

So what is wrong?

Google sells space. Basically 20Gb for $5 per year or 200Gb for $50. I have 150Gb of Jpgs. Unfortunately there is NO SERVICE that would allow me to upload my NEF (raw files) and they will create the Jpgs or something.

This is expensive. I would have to go for 200Gb so $50 per year.

Another problem is that there is no good iphone app to upload from the iPhone your photos and videos to picasaweb (hello!!).

Then we have Flickr. Flickr is cheap. $25 per year for unlimited space. If I just want a backup then why not go for flickr?

I don’t like it. I know the community is the best one, so if you want to promote your photos then it is far better. If you want to make profit by selling them then smugmug pro is the winner ($150 year).

Flickr has not desktop app. They don’t respect my folder structure. If I choose flickr and I have 150Gb to upload, I would love to keep my folder structure in sets (this is what flickr considers folders) but the flickr uploadr doesn’t allow that. So I would end up with 50.000 photos in a bucket and then do the job online to classify them on sets, collections do the map thing (which sucks compared to google map) and faces… (again!!).

So here I am. On one side the winner is google, but I think they are expensive and I don’t know how fast my storage demands will grow, but for me today is twice the price of flickr.

On the other side, everybody use flickr. I guess you get use to it, but the sycn and the process of uploading the photos… for that I continue with gallery2 in my servers, I copy everything to an external HD, I plug it in my mums and I rsync it once in a while. But then what do I do with the videos I take with the phone? Put them all in youtube?

Maybe…

Anybody went to this hard choice?

Online Backup Unlimited for $5 per month

We all know how important it is to backup our computers, but studies consistently show that most computer users — even those that know better — don’t.

As Internet connections get faster and storage becomes less expensive, online backup services like Backblaze, Mozy and Carbonite have stepped-in to help consumers back up their data.

Not only are these services useful, they are also very inexpensive. Most of the services offer unlimited (truly) storage for your online backups for around $5 a month. Now, granted, storage prices are constantly decreasing, but how can companies make those sorts of claims?

Online backup service Backblaze has decided to shed some light on how it manages to offer unlimited backup storage to its customers, while also easily expanding its own cloud-based storage platform. Today, Backblaze posted an entry in its company blog that explains what tools and hardware it uses to maintain cheap, efficient storage for its customers. Backblaze hopes that other businesses who are looking at building cloud-based storage solutions can use this information as inspiration or as a blueprint for themselves.

Yes, this is not a joke, the no fuss solution to getting all your data backed up securely. Online backup for only $5/month per computer for unlimited storage: backblaze

(from mashable)