Online /cloud Backup for raw

wersal gummage

Hi,

Can anyone recommend a good website for backing up photos?

Obviously a keen price would be great, but am more interested in reputable /long term safety.

Would Google drive be suitable? Would Google drive photo storage he separate to Google photos in terms of looking through Google photos storage? (eg I don't want to see thousands of raw files in my Google photos).

Anything I need to be aware of regarding image compression or safety /security /encryption etc?
Thanks a lot!

evolutionqy7

wersal gummage wrote: »

Hi,

Can anyone recommend a good website for backing up photos?

Obviously a keen price would be great, but am more interested in reputable /long term safety.

Would Google drive be suitable? Would Google drive photo storage he separate to Google photos in terms of looking through Google photos storage? (eg I don't want to see thousands of raw files in my Google photos).

Anything I need to be aware of regarding image compression or safety /security /encryption etc?
Thanks a lot!

I don't think GPhotos will store RAW.
Under the free storage option, it converts them to a JPEG anyway.

If you drop photos into Google Drive, they will show up in Google Photos.
They will remain in whatever format you saved them.

I use Google Photos as a backup drive, so any more important negatives are kept in the OneDrive backup and the two don't overlap.

toe_knee

I am using Amazon Drive. Its not great but it does for now. You get Amazon Prime with it also which is a bonus. 
I have been meaning to look into this more but never got around to it.

duckmusic

+1 for Amazon Drive. Unlimited photo storage, and then Amazon Prime and lots of other goodies thrown in with it when you subscribe

wersal gummage

Thanks all.

Toe knee, care to elaborate on why amazon is not great??

At this stage its probably between Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Might try out Amazon and Microsoft on a free trial with small levels of storage to see what it's like before committing to either. Amazon is coming up competitively priced in US but is then bouncing me to its UK site which is more expensive.... Must look into VPN type stuff and see if I can get a US price

evolutionqy7

Is VPN worth the hassle? If your uploading photos you may also hit data caps on a VPN, also VPN's tend to be slower than a direct connection, so upload speeds probably will be pretty poor.

Adobe has a plan for 18.99 which gives you 1TB of storage in their cloud on top of your lightroom and photoshop.

General Junk backup goes to Google and then important copies stay in RAW form on PC.

Depends on how much storage you need, something like WD My Book Live might do you?
Its an external HDD with access to your files online. Makes you in control of your backups. Might be cheaper in the long run?

wersal gummage

evolutionqy7 wrote: »

Is VPN worth the hassle?

I meant use a VPN to sign up for the American price, and then not afterwards... I'm not very tech savvy so maybe that is a foolish idea.

As to the rest, thanks for the suggestions. I don't need huge storage. I would just like to have an online back up. I know having an external drive is easier and cheaper (and I have one), but would just be a bit happier knowing that I had it online somewhere.... We've had the house flood in the past, broken into etc...

evolutionqy7

Then it depends on how much storage you need.
I find photos generally take up very little space unless you hold onto absolutely every single photo. Video is where it gets serious.

Microsoft OneDrive is €7 pm for 1TB + you get Microsoft Office.
Google seems to be at €10 and so is dropbox.

No idea about Amazon, any googling I do seems to bring up American pricing which begs me to think that they haven't really rolled it out properly here yet.

Either way, I would recommend setting up a backup google account for photos regardless. Its free, they downgrade the res and quality a little bit, but it's not bad by all regards. Better than having nothing anyway.

wersal gummage

Thanks. I have the free Google photos account but have it set to keep original size, not compressed. As such, I'm just about out of space.

Typically, my photos are about 35mb each. So it adds up pretty quickly. If I use the camera a fair bit over a weekend I could easily be uploading 5+GB afterwards. I would delete quite a few immediately and then keep the rest. I do a very small bit of work on these, convert a handful to small jpeg files (about 3mb) and then save them to Google photos (the small jpeg). The original raw files are just sitting on the laptop (with a backup HD). Looking to store these original raw files online. It's certainly not something that the free Google storage is suitable for, and I do not want to compress or lose quality.

I will give the Microsoft a go I think.

awec

I use OneDrive for mine.

toe_knee

wersal gummage wrote: »

Thanks all.

Toe knee, care to elaborate on why amazon is not great??

At this stage its probably between Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Might try out Amazon and Microsoft on a free trial with small levels of storage to see what it's like before committing to either. Amazon is coming up competitively priced in US but is then bouncing me to its UK site which is more expensive.... Must look into VPN type stuff and see if I can get a US price

I dont like the interface and its quite slow. I am sure there are better options out there. 
I spoke to a professional photographer friend of mine and he uses Back Blaze and swears by it. He has some huge clients and cant afford not to have a good backup. Its 50 usd a year or 95 for 2 years so its competitively priced. They do a trial as well. Going to try it out myself and see.

toe_knee

Here is a little review about some of the best ones out there
https://www.cloudwards.net/carbonite-vs-backblaze-vs-idrive/

gloobag

If you sign up for a Google Business account, you can upgrade your Gdrive storage to unlimited. I pay €10 a month for a personalised Gmail domain and unlimited storage. You also get access to Google File Stream, which basically lets your Gdrive act like a network drive on your pc.

I'm pretty sure it's not really "unlimited" though. I managed to find the real cap of 10TB deep in the Admin Console once.

evolutionqy7

toe_knee wrote: »

Here is a little review about some of the best ones out there
https://www.cloudwards.net/carbonite-vs-backblaze-vs-idrive/

I've never heard of either of these companies. Not sure how much I would trust my data with either of them.

It's unlikely that MS/Google/Amazon are going to disappear overnight.
Even though they might miss some extra features that those other companies specialise in.

toe_knee

evolutionqy7 wrote: »

I've never heard of either of these companies. Not sure how much I would trust my data with either of them.

It's unlikely that MS/Google/Amazon are going to disappear overnight.
Even though they might miss some extra features that those other companies specialise in.

These companies are around a long time and are the global leaders in the industry. That's their business.
I wouldn't buy a car from MS/Google/Amazon Just because they make them. I would buy from a car builder

Bacchus

OP, check out SmugMug. Unlimited storage of images (doesn't support RAW though) for about €40 a year. I've been using them for about 3 years now. Fantastic service.

BackBlaze has been mentioned already but that's more suited to general data backup. You'll quickly run into a huge bill if you're using it to store photos (well... depends a bit on how many photos you take). SmugMug is designed for photo management, it's unlimited storage and there's a nice app for your phone to also do direct uploads to your account, and to browse the galleries.

evolutionqy7

toe_knee wrote: »

These companies are around a long time and are the global leaders in the industry. That's their business.
I wouldn't buy a car from MS/Google/Amazon Just because they make them. I would buy from a car builder

What have cars and builders have to do with online data storage...

All of the mentioned companies do online storage.
All I am saying. There's a higher change that a smaller company may go under vs. the likes of Microsoft/Google/Amazon.

toe_knee

evolutionqy7 wrote: »

What have cars and builders have to do with online data storage...

All of the mentioned companies do online storage.
All I am saying. There's a higher change that a smaller company may go under vs. the likes of Microsoft/Google/Amazon.

Pointing out the fact that these are not small companies and that this is their speciality. Unlike the companies you mentioned.
Just because you haven't heard of them doenst mean they are not big companies

evolutionqy7

toe_knee wrote: »

Pointing out the fact that these are not small companies and that this is their speciality. Unlike the companies you mentioned.
Just because you haven't heard of them doenst mean they are not big companies

Smaller...not small. You seem to be very defensive of them.
Do they pay you to promote them

Bacchus

In defense of the smaller companies, they manage to keep their prices competitive with (if not better than) the likes of Amazon and Google.... and they do it with a better interface, particularly some of the photo storage vendors. For instance, Amazon's Glacier storage is dirt cheap but has a miserable interface and requires zipping batches of files/photos to keep the price of uploads down. BackBlaze is only $0.001 per Gb more expensive than Glacier, and is a good bit cheaper than S3 (Amazons slightly friendly storage platform), and it has a nice simple UI to drop in files. Then you have the likes of SmugMug (which I think leverages AWS) that gives you unlimited photo storage and free downloads starting from about €40 a year... which depending on how much you're storing is cheaper than BackBlaze.

wersal gummage

Thanks for all the comments. I went with Microsoft in the end. I'm not very tech savvy so wouldn't be knowledgeable on the more niche / specialist providers out there so was attracted by the big name.....

fixXxer

Bacchus wrote: »

OP, check out SmugMug. Unlimited storage of images (doesn't support RAW though) for about €40 a year. I've been using them for about 3 years now. Fantastic service.

SMugmug looks interesting. Did you set up a website through them or do you just use it for storage. I see they offer a shop front section as well, but not much information on how much of each sale they take.

Bacchus

fixxxer wrote: »

SMugmug looks interesting. Did you set up a website through them or do you just use it for storage. I see they offer a shop front section as well, but not much information on how much of each sale they take.

I just have the basic plan with them. I seriously can't fault them. Very easy to organise your photos into folders & galleries. Very easy to set up sharing with others or make galleries public/private. The app (on Android) is fantastic for browsing through. All for about €40 a year!

I know they have the higher packages that lets you set up a website and shop front but I have my own site for that. Smugmug is for personal backup/galleries as well as delivering photos to clients.

The ONE downside is lack of RAW support. That just means I need a separate service for backing up RAWs.