cloud storage ?...hope mentioning cloud doesn't scare anybody

[jtk]

Everything digital winds up on some kind of cloud, whether we want it or not.

Photrio Media and Flickr and Zenfolio and the stuff we shoot with phones...it all winds up in a cloud, with or without our control...no matter what website hosts claim (IMO).

OK. I want to start using some kind of cloud/s to back my processed images up. Everything I shoot digitally and almost everything I printed for years in darkroom (if I cared about it) has already been scanned, stored in a hard drive, and backed up on another hard drive.

Problem is, much of the Western United States is bone dry. Fires are expanding. Homes in cities aren't safer from fires than are homes in wilderness.

Question: what cloud system do you use now, are you happy with it...or do you intend to use soon? I'm undecided.

This OT fits perfectly with "ethics and philosophy of photography" because so many of us routinely whistle through the graveyard and falsely try to convince others that allegedly "archival" prints can be counted upon for the next generation.

 

[pdeeh]

'Equivalents storage', surely?

 

[BAC1967]

I use Carbonite, it updates the backup every evening automatically. It’s already saved my files once when a hard drive crashed. I can also access the files online if I’m away from my computer. I’ve worked on the cleanup of a few wildfires in California, nothing in your home is safe, even if you use one of the so called “fire safes”.

 

[Sean]

I've been using these guys for over 10yrs without a single issue: https://www.rsync.net/cloudstorage.html
Their support section has documentation for setting up various OSes.

 

[Theo Sulphate]

I would choose the cloud storage provider that has the highest likelihood of existing for the very long term - I suppose that's Google. I may eventually do that, though at this time none of my photos have ever been on the internet (other than Photrio camera photos).

 

[slackercrurster]

Don't have a smartphone. Can't afford it. Just use a $75 a year TracFone with no cam from Walmart.

What I don't like about the cloud is if you are behind a month paying they delete all your photos.

 

[jtk]

'Equivalents storage', surely?

Not "equivalent," Literal storage of the digital info from scans, digital cameras, phones etc. Modern times.

 

[jtk]

Don't have a smartphone. Can't afford it. Just use a $75 a year TracFone with no cam from Walmart.

What I don't like about the cloud is if you are behind a month paying they delete all your photos.

Wrong in fact. Look into the reality.

 

[jtk]

If you don't like the idea of cloud, just store your photos in your shoe box. Your house might burn down but do you really care?

 

[Jim Jones]

I don't have my head in the clouds, nor store images there.

 

[Theo Sulphate]

My negatives are in a safety deposit box in a bank vault as well as the shoebox. But I wouldn't mind selectively archiving and sharing digital versions such as with Instagram. I am just totally ignorant of what's available and of the good and bad aspects of certain providers.

 

[Fin]

I guess I'm a bit old school here. My negatives are in the house. I have a small RAID server in an out building which is also fitted with a tape drive. My Mum (or Mom for you people in the US) has some of my backup tapes.

Offsite backup. Job, jobbed!

 

[Theo Sulphate]

I guess I'm a bit old school here... a tape drive. ...

Surely you don't mean something like a 7-track Univac, 9-track IBM, or DECtape drive? That's really old school. God help you if it's anything from Iomega.

Tape is not good: the magnetization bleeds across the tape windings over the years. After 10-20 years, it's full of errors.

 

[ReginaldSMith]

This is off topic a bit, but it might be humorous.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, IBM ran a network protocol called 3270 SNA. It featured a massive centralized mainframe with hundreds or thousands of remote terminals. When the PC was announced, every one starting yelling, "It's BAD to have a central file system! Bad things will happen! This has to end! We need to de-centralize all computing! Put each computer on a desk!" And within a few years, 3270 SNA was dead as a mackerel. Guess what? Centralized lives again, but they renamed it "CLOUD."

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

There are all sorts of levels of archival storage. I have prints and negs that will contain visual information independent of what happens in the future with file formats or digital storage media that I keep in a climate controlled, fireproof storage facility. No guarantees but it’s what I can do with my analogue media, and I wouldn’t consider a digital copy to be a backup of my analogue materials. I would consider archival (such as they are) analogue prints to be a backup of my digital files.

That said, I still need digital storage and backup for my digital files. I backup to a second hard drive, and then when I cycle out a hard drive every year or two, I make a backup of everything and put it in my storage unit, so there are two digital copies of everything at home as well as 1-3 copies off site.

Any opinions or recommendations regarding NAS systems, or “Personal Clouds,” where you have your own system on your own network? We live in a condo where the building pays for 300 Mbps internet service that gets covered by our maintenance fees, so since I’m paying for it anyway, it seems like it would make more sense (setting aside the issue of offsite backup) to set up my own cloud or RAID system for my first level of backup plus remote access on the network than to pay subscription fees for a cloud service I have less control over. I could still backup periodically to a separate drive for offsite backup in case of fire or other natural disaster. If I need to protect against ballistic missiles, I suppose I should have some really distant offsite backup.

 

[pdeeh]

Not "equivalent," Literal storage of the digital info from scans, digital cameras, phones etc. Modern times.

you might want to look into the history of photography sometime.

 

[blockend]

you might want to look into the history of photography sometime.

I got the joke. Anyway, clouds. Seems like a lot a bother for an analogue photographer. There's a fine line between us owning our hobbies, and them us. I already scan my negatives as well as printing, which is an additional PIA compared to the old days, and process my own colour and mono. There's a plastic bag full of exposed films waiting in the freezer from the last month or so. I mean if we're going to worry about our photography back catalogue, what about people who own antique books, china, vintage cars on anything subject to flood, fire or theft?

If I were a 100% digital photographer uploading to a cloud would be a sensible decision, but deciding which is pure guesswork and a complete gamble. They're the digital equivalent of Vivian Maier's lock up, when you stop paying they'll be erased, thumbnailed or sold as stock photos.

 

[pdeeh]

I got the joke

on topic, however, let's remember that "cloud storage" = "someone else's computer"

 

[blockend]

however, let's remember that "cloud storage" = "someone else's computer"

Absolutely.

 

[ITD]

on topic, however, let's remember that "cloud storage" = "someone else's computer"

Not sure I get why this is necessarily a problem. Isn't a bank vault “someone else's safe”?

 

[FujiLove]

I use Backblaze for work files, not photography. It works well and I'm happy with it.

https://www.backblaze.com/

Be careful with automated cloud storage, and confirm it's backing up everything you want it to. For example, some services don't back up movie files or files over a certain size by default, potentially leaving you up the creek if your local drive dies.

 

[darkosaric]

Here is nice read about the cloud, and what it can do to you:

https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/07/01/0354200/why-you-should-not-use-google-cloud

 

[pdeeh]

Not sure I get why this is necessarily a problem. Isn't a bank vault “someone else's safe”?

Huge corporations (banks included - there was something that happened in 2008 as I recall?) crash and burn.

Banks and their vaults are covered by legislation.

100s of millions of people lost their money though perhaps not their valuables in storage.

Let's see what happens if google or aws loses all your photos in a server glitch (this happens).

"the cloud" is not some magical faerie land where only good things happen.

Shit happens in the cloud too.

The point is that all media are vulnerable. Someone else's computer might be a bit more safe than your own but it is not guaranteed.

Prints and negatives are subject to loss, fire, theft, physical deterioration and angry relatives.

Tapes print through, stretch, get lost, jammed, burned.

Cds/dvds deteriorate, the dyes fade, get lost scratched burnt stolen cracked.

Hard drives crash, get subject to bit loss, are vulnerable to magnetic fields, static electricity and other emc issues.

Servers and server farms and hot sites flood, burn, lose power, have their ups' fail, don't pay their electricity bills, individual psus die, explode, burn, chips fail, ram fails.

Companies go into liquidation, lay people off, have crap employees who are negligent ...

File and disk and tape formats change, become obsolete, hardware can't be found to read it ...

People die and their passwords die with them, or nobody knows they had a million photos in a cloud somewhere.

So you take the best steps you can to ameliorate risk and hope for the best.

As for me, i remember that there are billions of prints and negatives from the past 100 years still in attics, drawers, in cupboards and under beds, billions of others have been cremated or dumped in landfill.

The question does deserve to be askedt- why bother worrying?

You think your family in 100 years time are going to be looking through your digital archive of half a million pics? They'll be too busy catching rats to eat and gathering rags to wear.

Historical value? (the "doomed to repeat" trope)

There are extensive archives available online and in museums and other places that document the Nazi atrocities of WW2. People are shown them in schools.

That doesn't seem to be stopping up descending into further atrocity as I write this.

You know ... Just worry about something that matters is what I think.

It's being so cheerful that keep me going.

 

[blockend]

You think your family in 100 years time are going to be looking through your digital archive of half a million pics?

No, and the reason they won't is digital storage. People used to inherit at best a few hundred prints or slides. If they were generic shots of the Parthenon or Niagara Falls taken on holiday in 1961, it's probably safe to put them back in a shoe box and return them to the attic from whence they came. Lots of people acquired a handful of portraits or snaps when someone died, something to show grandchildren or visitors who were interested.

Now, ordinary people might have access to hundreds of a relative's photographs, and from a keen digital snapshooter, tens of thousands of un-labelled, unedited variations on a theme. Will descendants become semi-professional custodians of those fragments of someone else's history? Of course not, they'll be busy photographing their own lives and if they ever think of Uncle Joe's hard drive or cloud code, it'll be to wonder what the hell became of USB ports or if SafeCloud dot.com is even a thing.

Make prints, put them in a box, and write what they are on the back in pencil. It's worked for more than a century.

 

[ITD]

It's being so cheerful that keep me going.