I finally committed to a photo storage

[unicornduke]

I ended up grabbing the paid dropbox. It's $100 a year for a terabyte, which is not that cheap as far as data storage goes. However, I already use dropbox extensively, all my phone photos are autouploaded and all of my important documents are on there. 

So it seems like it makes sense. Plus I don't need to go to amazon directly, although maybe dropbox hosts on there, I don't know. 

Tomorrow morning, I'll start pulling my pictures from the server and uploading them to dropbox along with the ones I've got on my computer currently.  

Comments

[graydon]

Hurrah for offsite storage!

Nice lady at Google killed the RAID-5 storage market about... oh, Gods Below, more than 10 years ago now. They'd done a massive statistical analysis, and the answer was "(at least) three places that have nothing to do with each other". So if you really want to keep this stuff, Dropbox is one of those three places. (Your computer is another one. A backpack drive can be three. Though I'd stick the important documents on a USB key, too.)

[unicornduke]

Yeah, I'm finally getting around to doing this stuff, something mumble years after knowing that.

I'm going to buy a external harddrive soonish and have that as my third. My concern about having important documents on a flashdrive is losing it. I end up rotating through USB drives pretty frequently and I just stick them places. I probably have all of them, I just have no clue where they are.

[graydon]

Yeah, USB drives are kinda physically too small for human purposes in a lot of ways. I have two that live in my belt pack in a very specific place, one of which has the backups, but the others? God may know; I sure don't.

If there's room, it might make sense to stick copies of the important stuff on your phone?

Drive docks -- where you slide the bare hard drive in from the top, rather like a toaster -- seem to be a better approach for backups than actual external drive enclosures. (One USB-connected thing, several backups; I have a couple of drives that live in Pelican 1060 cases, because those just take a 3.5" drive for width.) It certainly works out cheaper as soon as there's a second hard drive.

Hurrah for backups!

[unicornduke]

I wish those USB godspeed, wherever their journeys may take them.

Dropbox is on my phone as well, I might designate the important stuff folder as offline storage on there since that's a feature of the paid account. That's definitely a good idea.

drive docks look neat! I think the thing for me, is that I don't think I'll ever fill one 1 TB hard drive. I take pictures but not with a fancy camera, just a point and shoot and my phone. So after five years of smartphone and many many years of point and shoot, I think I'm up around 150GB of pictures. I know I should do a backup of my computer but honestly, there's nothing actually important on it. I had to get a new computer a year ago after the charging port died (I was in the middle of job searching hard and had several weeks before I'd be able to get it to my dad for repair so I just got a new one) and I don't remember it being a pain to get the new one set up. There's no real programs and the only real thing of value was the pictures, which dad pulled from the hard drive and onto the server.

I don't know.

[graydon]

Thank you! Individual USB sticks do sometimes come back for a visit.

You aren't under any obligation to have anything important on your computer! (I mean, the entire Chrome OS business model supposes that you don't. :)

If it takes you years to accumulate 150 GB of pictures, getting a 256 GB SD card and keeping it in your wallet (or equivalent) would make as much sense as getting a whole hard drive. Not any less losable than a USB stick but also something that might do better with being zipped into a small pocket in its tiny case.

[unicornduke]

That's a pretty good idea! I do have a zip section of my wallet which I never use. That would be a good spot along with some emergency cash.

[dragonlady7]

We have a RAID array server in our house that runs automatic timed backups. And then I have my photos backed up, mostly, lackadaisically, onto a 1TB portable backup drive, because those things are so cheap. Just-- so cheap.
I am well aware none of this will do me any good if my house burns down. And honestly I should just fill a second hard drive with the things I genuinely care about and leave it either at work or at the farm.

[unicornduke]

Yeah, that's why I've gone with dropbox. It's somewhere in the universe. Existing. And I don't use a stand alone camera mostly so it works.

Its probably worth looking into a second and dropping it at the farm.