For a while I wanted to start backing up my photos also online. I have everything stored twice at different external hard drives, but I think thats not enough. I still needed a good cloud solution. So looking around, there were few requirements, based on which I choosen.
- unlimited storage – since I keep also the .psd files, the backup folder grows in size quite quickly
- support for files over 2gb – a psd file of a ponorama can quickly go over 3 or 4 gigabites in size
- easy access from all platforms – an app just for some platforms is not enough
- provided by a bigger, stable company – one can find usually cheaper solution from startups, but I prefer a company with a much smaller chance of going out of business
- manual backup – I have no need for a complete backup of my HDD. All I need to backup are certain folders.
- online only files – I wanted to have the ability to keep some files only on-line, with no local copy after upload
- reasonable price – as always, the cheaper the better :)
- anything more is a bonus :)
So with this in my, in the end I chosen Office 365. This is of course not a backup solution, but a software subscription. But since Microsoft gives and unlimited Onedrive storage to every subscription of Office 365 (it’s promoted as a 1TB storage on the site, but if you look through new announcements, it has been announced a while ago, that there is no limit anymore), this became a great way to backup files. Recently the maximum size of file one can upload changed from 2gb to 10gb, which is great for those huge PSD files and from my searching, the only limit right now on the service, is of 20 000 files per account. But this should be also lifted soon.
The price of the service is also really good. You can get the Office 365 personal starting at 69 usd/eur a year, but if you don’t buy it directly from Microsoft, you can find it much cheaper. Took mi only few minutes to find a 50% off deal on the Internet, and maybe there are even better I missed. This is a very acceptable price, and you even get a copy of Office with it.
Right now I’m in the uploading process, which will take some time, as my PSD folder is over 600gb in size. But once that’s done, I can sleep a little better, knowing everything is in the cloud. The only thing I don’t like, is that you cant have folders outside of the Onedrive folder uploaded automatically in the background. Either you move things into the Onedrive folder, or just upload them using the website.
Do you backup you photos in the cloud? If yes, what service do you use?
