# Online Backup Options



## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

For the past years I've been using Google Drive sync as my online backup in the 100GB plan for $20 a year. I hit the limit and the next tier is the 1TB for $10 a month, which is the same as dropbox. I'm looking at other options. So far pCloud seems to be winning with the ability to sync any folder. I use a similar feature on Box with my work account, but the box individual account max out at 100GB.

My data is mainly raw images (~20MB each) plus video. I add around 20GB every year. So the service should be able to handle large files. I've been storing the videos in a different folder and not online backing it up, but it is a pain.

My constrains: 
+250GB
large files

I do have external backup drives in a NAS and I also have a portable HD that I backup once every 6 months and store it at my work office, so online backup is just the 4 layer of redundancy.

Reviews of online services read like advertisement to me and I would like to hear options from members. dfw_pilot you take a lot of pictures, what do you use?


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## dfw_pilot (Jan 28, 2017)

My Lightroom photos total about 550GB and like you, the number keeps climbing each year.

I use a tiered approach.

All my data sits on a 16 TB Thunderbay external enclosure in 12 TB of Raid 5, using SoftRaid. Keeping all my data on a separate volume from my OS makes updating the operating system much simpler and less error prone. Remember: _Raid is *not* a backup_. It's for fault tolerance. Think of it this way: if you delete something off the raid volume or the house burns down, was the raid a backup? No. It's great for protecting against drive failure and for speeding up data reads/writes. The first tier is a separate volume on that raid drive for TimeMachine. TimeMachine is great for hourly backups and accidental deletes. A full restore can be made from a TimeMachine backup, but it takes hours to do and can be error prone.

The next tier is a bootable clone that backups to a separate drive each night. It's a cheap internal drive that's plugged into a drive reader. I love this because these are bootable so as to get back up and running in a few minutes. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to run this backup each night. I have about five of these drives and rotate them about once a week. Keeping one in my desk, one in the safe, and one off-site means that this is the first real backup that I consider fairly safe.

Using CCC, I also send incremental backups to a drive connected to my mom's computer several miles away. CCC makes this easy and it serves as a cheap (free) cloud backup.

Finally, I use Amazon's Glacier to have a robust off-site backup. It's pennies per gig and spread out on a worldwide network. I love it. For a few bucks a month, it's bullet proof, and used by all sorts of companies, big and small. I just run an SFTP backup to it every few weeks with Panic's Transmit. You can't upload directly to Glacier, but you can to Amazon's S3. S3 is like a web server - you can load the volume right on your desktop and have instant access to your files. The drawback is that it's expensive per gig. So, you setup a simple permission to move all your S3 files over to Glacier (I use three days as a rule) and you save a huge amount of money doing so. Glacier requires 4-6 hours to restore, but for backups, this isn't a big deal.

I really have come to love CCC. You can backup all the computers in your house to a single drive mounted to one computer. They can be bootable, even when backed up over a network, so when your hard drive fails, getting back up an running with minimal or no data-loss is easy.

TL;DR

I keep my data on external Raid volume for fault tolerance and speed performance. On the same raid, I use TimeMachine for hourly backups. On a second external, I use CCC to backup all data and make a bootable clone of the computer each night. Five of those drives are rotated about once a week, both on-sight and off-site. I use CCC to send the same data across town to a drive plugged into my mom's computer for further off-site backup. Finally, I use Amazon's Glacier to cheaply store all my photos and "can't lose" data for a couple bucks a month.

I'd never forgive myself if my wedding photos or pictures of the birth of our kids ever got lost because a hard drive failed, got stolen, or was destroyed in a flood or fire. Good luck!

dfw


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## pennstater2005 (Jul 17, 2017)

I print out pictures of events I would be more sad about if lost. Like today! Just a few of each Christmas, birthday, or vacation.


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## Mightyquinn (Jan 31, 2017)

I use TimeMachine for my local backups and iDrive for my offsite backups as between my wife and I we don't have too much to back up and Idrive fits the bill just fine, up to 2TB. I think $60-70 a year is cheap insurance to having everything backed up off site.


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## kds (Apr 28, 2017)

I use Time Machine to my Synology NAS, which then backs up to Backblaze B2. No problems yet.

Most of my files are kept on the NAS. I'd like to use iCloud Drive and then find a way to back that up to Backblaze. I can't really trust iCloud yet.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

Thanks for the feedback. I 100% agree with multiple storage tier approach. For me I run Windows only for lightroom. I run linux mint in a different partition and I have a Data drive with no OS in it (photos, videos, files, ebook calibre database, ligthroom catalog). I then use mostly ChromeOS on chromebooks for web browsing. Therefore I dont care to backup my OS that much, but I do care about storing the data. Hence why I online store them and also store it in a backup HD at work.

MQ, I looked at idrive for quite a bit. The only reviews/comments seems to indicate issues with customer service. I like the options it provides 1) local backup to a network drive/NAS, 2) online backup and 3) online sync. You techically get 2TD for backup and 2TB for sync. Have you use the sync? Does it keep a folder structure?

Amazon Glacier is a great option and really inexpensive. Their retrieval cost used to be crazy high, but it has changed. It would be great piece of mind to store older pictures in there too.

Printing the photos is good until there is a fire or flood. Google offer 15GB free and 100GB for $20/year. It is really cheap to store .jpg online.


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## pennstater2005 (Jul 17, 2017)

I use Google photos to back up. I personally don't have to worry about flooding damage. Fire yes but chances minimal. I'm more worried that the hardware that stores my photos will fail somehow. I assume the backups have backups.

And my parents and siblings have photos of most major events as well so in the end I would have a few pictures. I don't ever look at all the pictures my parents took of me and they don't get those old photo books out that often either.

Just today my dad was watching his grandkids open their gifts and I asked if he wanted me to send him a picture. He said "nah, I'm good". That'll probably be me someday!


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## Killbuzz (Apr 30, 2017)

Synology NAS in RAID 6 and offsite to Amazon Glacier. Works great.


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## wardconnor (Mar 25, 2017)

What is the best NAS? I have a netgear ready Nas but it does have not a friendly user interface. It has been less than fulfilling for me with share permissions from a simple file server perspective.

Synology is what I'm gathering. Who has an opinion?


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## Killbuzz (Apr 30, 2017)

I've only owned a synology so I won't be much help. I will say that I love all of its features and have had 0 issues for the past two years.


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## GrassDaddy (Mar 21, 2017)

I backup to CrashPlan. It's $10/mo and unlimited space. I'm using 2.8Tb. I have a ReadyNAS but found it has issues so I just use large drives and CrashPlan will create a second copy on a second drive locally and then copy it to the cloud as well. So if I were to have a failed drive, I can restore it quickly with the local copy and if the whole thing goes down then got the cloud backup.


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