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?
I use Backblaze and love it. Unlimited storage, no file size limits, constant sync between computer and cloud, and free and easy file recovery for $5/month or less on a yearly plan. I currently have about 24gb of raw D800 files, psds and final jpegs. I’ve had to do complete recoveries twice, once after a computer crash, and once after a break-in. Both times were absolutely painless. You can select which computer drives you want to connect, choose when you want everything to sync, whether on a schedule or constant. It’s awesome, definitely the best option I’ve tried so far.
Really interesting option. And 24tb is really a lot. Do you do a lot of events? Because thats the only thing that comes to mind where you could take so many photos :)
I’ve been practicing a lot of hdr for years, but I go way overboard with excessive exposures and a huge number of small variations on the same scene. I use high megapixel cameras and I’m an e-hoarder who’s afraid of deleting even the most useless horrible blurry accidental shots because I often go back to photos years after I took them to process . :) 24 tb came much sooner than expected…
… you behaviour seem quite familiar to me ;)
Mind your file names. OneDrive has much lesser name space than your local NTFS drive have. (characters allowed in file/directory names, length limits and such things).
Enough said, you can stop reading here, only private blabla follows.
I have been testing OneDrive in combination with syncovery (which is a rather powerfull synchronisation utility with great custommer support) but had to abandon this idea. I only use it as a secondary backup which causes no additional costs (because I need office365 anyway) and I accept the fact that about 0,5% of my files cannot be backed-up (unless I rename them or purchase a OneDrive-aware backup utility). Do not get confused by the fact I use syncovery unknown to you: in the nutshell it mirrors the local files names to the cloud, so if file names are problems with syncovery so they will be a problem with upload just as well. Syncovery gave me, among many other things, the ability to recognise and drill-down this problem.
Interesting. Haven’t noticed that problem. But it may be, that I never use any special characters in my file names. I learned a long time ago, that it’s safer to have just everything set to English, and just use only English characters when it comes to PCs and Internet.
And I never thought of using an additional software with Onedrive. Probably because this will be mostly long time backup, that I will just update when I create a new file. But will have to take a look at it :)
to be preciese: “A FILE OR FOLDER NAME MUST NOT START OR END WITH ‘.’, AND MUST NOT CONTAIN ANY OF THE FOLLOWING CHARACTERS: /:;*|?”.
If you do not violate this rule, you will not run into such problem.
Additional software offers you more features like file exclusion masks, delayed delete of deleted files, keep multiple versions, move files that had been either renamed or moved into different folder localy instead of uploading them again, end-2-end encryption, etc.
I have overlooked you use local synchronisation to upload files to onedrive: on W8 using onedrive´s local folder I have got a nasty issue. I created a too-long file-name/path combination by accident. This not only resulted in an error message but the synchronisation ceased to work at all. Accessing my local synchronisation folder results in me beeing requested by W8 to correct this error in OneDrive, accessing OneDrive directly in an attempt to correct this error results in me beeing requested by the cloud to correct the error on the local machine first. Catch 22.
600 Gigs? I have 4 TB.
600 gigs are only the the PSDs I still have :) Before that I discarded PSDs after I finished the edit, so I kept only a merged copy in a Tiff file. But since I started posting the Process posts, I need access to the PSDs.
And you found really interesting errors. Good to know, but I hope I will never have this problem, as I use a very simple naming structure, and I hate long file names. You should send feedback to MS about this.
Feedback to MS? You are kidding;) It does not work unless you are a rather big company.
You never know :) Recently they they ask for feedback on everything :)
One and half year ago I tried to report another bug in Office365. After many pages of rather friendly conversion with first level support (as regard content: endless loop) I managed to get them to contact second level support. They replied that my request would require a change in the code so the are sorry but they cannot accept it.
Miroslav,
I was considering Onedrive as one of the best backup solutions for my photography. But 20 000 files limit killed it for me. Let us know if you managed to overcome this limitation.
Will definitively update the post if I find a solution, but from what I found right now, there is none. For me currently the 20 000 is not a problem, as I plan only to upload finished edits for now, but one day it may be.
I would probably be more interested to backup my RAW files first. Worst case scenario I can recreate PSD but now RAWs.
I use Crashplan for a few main reasons:
1. You van back up to an external HDD or an off-site friend for free. So long as they use Crashplan too and have enough space.
2. Once paid, Crashplan is truly unlimited. I have over 1,000,000 files totalling 2.4TB either backed up, or flagged for backup at present. The largest single file I have up there at the moment is 80GB (A Virtual Machine). And the best part – They save all versions and deleted files forever if you ask them to!
3. They support Linux, without having to pay for the business option. Three of the four computers I have use Linux in some form. (One of those three is a Synology NAS, and my main workflow computer runs Linux. Windows inside of a Virtual Machine on this. Lightrooms performance (as is Windows) is gratly improved this way!), so this was a dealbreaker for me!
4. They have a server in Australia where I am based.
5. with the family membership, all of my computers are covered.
And no, I don’t work for them – I am just a very happy customer!
Thank for the tip. They do offer some interesting solution. Quite interesting to see what everyone is using :)
Miroslav,
it’s been 4 months. How is it going with Office 365? Are you still using it? Like it?
Hi Victor
Still using it, but currently making a change in my backup process. I just got the Synology Ds415+ NAS, which holds the photos, and it synchronizes on it’s own with onedrive. Will see how this works out
what about 25 000 files limitation?
Haven’t reached that yet, as I first backup the finished stuff (mostly huge PSDs )