pendennis

I've been with I-Drive for a number of years, and I've never had the first problem with any data backup or retrieval. I use them for my laptop and desktop (where all my images are stored).

A lot has to do with process, and the one thing I do every time I download images, is to run a backup to I-Drive. I never skip this step. It doesn't cost anything extra, and it does create a second copy of my images with them when my scheduled upload happens the next morning.

srt101fan

Come on, Paul, nobody here is selling anything. I don't think you understand where Curmudgeon is coming from. He has a cloud backup service already but is looking for a new one. To suggest he do a navel-gazing cost-benefit analysis doesn't seem very helpful. 😐

johngault007 Loc: Florida Panhandle

Very honest and true statement there ^^^^^

My digital library is secondary to backing up my primary data server which contains all my research and documentation for work. Mine was a simple creation of a second bucket (folder) for my hobby. I can't bear the thought of losing 10+ years of technical writing and content for work.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

They are indeed good questions, and a lot of things drive that cost in addition to the service you choose including how much you shoot and how aggressively you cull. For most users, it’s media that will drive the storage - photos and music. My non-photo, non- music data from the last 20 years which includes everything from customer databases to outlook files to tax returns, etc is probably less than 100 GB, which costs $1.00 per month for Amazon’s mid tier S3 service. My collection of music is probably another 60 GB or another $.60 per month. Then there are the photos. I don’t shoot that much and cull very aggressively, so I have well under 1 TB - that’s ~8,000 10 MB JPEGs I keep in a public folder family archive - that’s another 80GB or $.80 per month and then the rest are raw “serious images”. Let’s say 20,000 40MB raw images or 800 GB. So the grand total to buy the best protection I can buy for all the data that all my computers and many, many thousands of $ worth of cameras and lenses generate (and that is their only purpose - to generate data) over decades is ~$10 per month or the cost of a LR/CC subscription. Now for those that do this professionally, keep every image they ever shot, good or bad or are really prolific with many TB of images, there are less expensive cloud options such as Backblaze or Amazon Glacier. Seems like a bargain to me, but everyone has their own opinion about the value of insurance and can guess how they might feel if they suddenly lost everything they had ever created, and every email they had ever sent or received.

Curmudgeon Loc: SE Arizona

I understood that and appreciate the concern. I just want one more layer of protection at a reasonable price. I have known too many people in my life who have lost it all through poor planing and I am determined that it won't happen to me. About the only things left to me is my wife and our memories. I will protect them both.

yssirk123 Loc: New Jersey

Backblaze does the trick for me, and it will backup multiple external drives.

OnDSnap Loc: NE New Jersey

BackBlaze....https://www.backblaze.com/

IzzyKap Loc: Rockville, MD

My images are on an external drive 6 TB connected to my iMac. I use SuperDuper software to automatically back up the catalog to a local 6TB drive 4 days a week during the night and have continual cloud backup via CrashPlan. I was with Crashplan for number of years and didn't have any issues.

Schoee Loc: Europe

I use Microsoft OneDrive which comes at no extra charge if you are Microsoft 365 (used to be called Office 365) subscriber. You can have folders on your computer that are synchronized to OneDrive so as soon as you save anything to that folder it starts making a copy to the OneDrive cloud storage. You can also access the OneDrive copy from smart phones or tablets when away from home.
OneDrive gives you licenses for 5 users. Each user gets 1 TB of storage.
If your internet upload speed in slow it can take a while for the folder’s contents to get copied to the cloud but there is a symbol next to the folder to show when it is fully backed up. First time I used it, it took 3 weeks of continuous upload to backup my photos!

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

"When it comes to backup you can't be too paranoid"

As far as what I use, I have been using CrashPlan for a few years now. The subscription price is not unreasonable in my opinion. CrashPlan is really set up for one computer, but I make sure that my laptop files get fed into my desktop occasionally, long enough to get them backed up. CrashPlan does versions, so if a file gets corrupted, the backup does not overwrite an older uncorrupted file. CrashPlan will also save your backups to a local disk in addition to the cloud so if you have a minor problem you can restore files from the local drive without bandwidth worries.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

WJShaheen Loc: Gold Canyon, AZ

ELNikkor

Chances are slim that the fire that burns down your house will also burn down the bank on the same day, so, to me, the cloud would be redundant. Still Amazon S3 or Google would be as reliable as any, if it will help you sleep better, (maybe get two cloud services, just in case one fails, it is doubtful both will fail on the same day.)

Xpatch Loc: New York, Antigua, GT.

Amazon Prime and Dropbox, plus local backup and time Machine. I had to use Prime to recover a large number of files and they were all there.

Bayou

If all you need is backup, then Backblaze is likely the best choice.

If you need backup AND sync capabilities, the OneDrive or iDrive. OneDrive is limited to 1TB, while iDrive offers 5TB.

If you like to access your data files from more than one device, you'd appreciate the sync capabilities. Anything in a sync folder is synced to all your devices, AND backed up.