backing up photos on the internet

[selfesteem]

I currently back up my photos on a hard drive/memory sticks and store in a fire proof safe but would like to back them up online for additional security. A friend had recommended mozy cloud storage but the £4.99 per month storage does not have enough memory.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I am happy to copy the photos over myself, I don't need automatic back up but I don't want them on a service that shares photos. Thanks

[EasyFromNowOn]

It depends how much you need. Dropbox, box.net, google drive and skydrive (microsoft) are all free. If you are already signed up with gmail or hotmail/outlook.com you may already have space available. If you have been a hotmail/outlook user for a while it could be a decent chunk of space, I think mine is 25gb.

I got (I think) 4gb free with dropbox and another 48gb with my phone, but you can sign up for more than one account using different email addresses.

[EasyFromNowOn]

just checked - I have two skydrives, one 25gb and one 7gb, and two gdrives, 15gb each.

[selfesteem]

Thanks for this. Ideally I would like 150gb to store my last couple of years of photos, as each photo uses a lot of memory as it is an SLR camera. I am happy to pay for it but would like it all in one place.

[EasyFromNowOn]

Dropbox do paid for accounts, 200gb is $19.99/month or $200/year if you pay up front.

Box.net is £11/month for 1000gb, if you only want one user. You can add others for extra.

[niceguy2]

Hi Selfesteem.

Have you thought about setting up a Flickr account? The new Flickr gives you 1TB of storage which should be more than enough. Depends if you are planning to upload JPG's or RAW's. You can always set your galleries to private so you are not sharing with the world.

Personally I use Crashplan which is $4 per month or around £32 a year. It just sits on my main server slowly uploading everything to the Internet and a real fire & forget solution. It saved me a few months ago when I had deleted a wedding off my computer and local backup. Crashplan still had it.

[selfesteem]

thanks for this. I wasn't sure if flickr was meant for sharing so wouldn't be appropriate. I will look into it if it can be totally private and also into your other suggestion.

[MuswellHillDad]

Last time I checked my upload speed with Virgin Media was 0.5 (download is 30).

The issue I had was how long it would take to upload 200gb +. It was going to take several months!

A better solution is to get two NAS drives that use Rsync. Replicate them on site and then take one to a relatives house and re-establish the Rsync. It will take a bit of setting up, but then you can leave your photos on your home NAS knowing they are being replicated offsite daily.

[niceguy2]

lol yes. my initial backup to Crashplan took weeks! but then I did have 300gb of photos lol. Despite this I'm still a fan