Curious about possibly using forever.com for archival digital photo storage

[koraks]

@Bushcat that's also plausible.
Either way, there are plenty of ways how ComCast could come up with supposed 'attacks' on a Diskstation that in reality are totally normal usage patterns.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Every image I’ve ever shot is stored and cataloged in a database. My kids have access to the database and when I’m gone I am thinking of putting it in the public domain through a historical group I am familiar with. That it is searchable by subject could prove valuable others.

BTW, the vast majority of my images are not family, friends, or pictures of me on vacation.

I think that's a great project. My photos aren't that important.

Regarding family shots, I didn't mean that we have to print every last one of them. Samples are all others will want. Maybe a photo book from Blurb of family shots would be appreciated by them. I did my first one last year of my grandson's 1st birthday party.

I also scanned all my old 35mm slides of my daughter and made a digital video slide show with music, titles, etc. to playback on a monitor or TV. Originally, I gave the "show" to her on a DVD with spare backup. But then she eliminated DVD readers on her new computer. So, copied all of them onto an SD card which she can plug into the smart TV or computer. Who knows how long those will last. That's why photo prints are the best archival record for the long run I believe.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

How would people who back up their "leased" Adobe Photoshop program files handle relatives handling that after death whether on-line backup or dedicated home backup hardware?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

@wiltw, Individual devices on a LAN (behind a router) are by default inaccessible from the outside world. All routers, including the ones used by all ISP's, require manual configuration by the user to enable outside access (port forwarding) to devices on the LAN. This is not ISP specific; it's an inherent property of how TCP/IP was designed.

Any danger to giving relatives who visit the modem/router's password so they can use my homes' wifi while they're here?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Small warning about Synology: it seems to be heading towards supporting its own drives only, which are very expensive. QNAP has worked well for me but the software has a history of vulnerabilities, and I currently have an Asustor which is cheap, based on Busybox, and works very well. I rolled my own Unraid NAS for long-term storage for two reasons: firstly, one can simply add drives of any capacity (with one minor caveat), which takes care of all the old drives I have laying around. Secondly, files are not "striped" across drives, so in the event of a cataclysmic failure the files are still accessible on the individual drives making up the cluster. Incidentally, my QNAP has a cheap Tensor dongle attached so it does face and object recognition, etc., on photos which can be useful.

I use the clouds that come with Office 365, Google, Dropbox etc to back up some stuff, via the NASes.

Warnings about huge drives and huge cloud storage: a RAID device with a failed 14TB drive may take a week to rebuild onto a replacement drive. At RAID 1 or RAID 5, your data is very vulnerable for that period. Most cloud storage is rate-limited for downloads: 1TB could take weeks. Indeed, Backblaze recommends using its HD delivery service for really big recoveries. Our Google backups-to-metal (around 4TB) take about one week to prep and then three weeks to actually download. Dropbox has limits on both size and number of files.

How much can you backup for free if you bought Office 365?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Because Comcast is incompetent. Even the language you use is strange. What is "internet ID"? There is no such thing in network engineering or cybersecurity fields. None of this makes any sense, sounds like a marketing bullcrap to me. I suspect they convinced you to use their software by spreading some kind of FUD. Nobody should ever need any software made by their internet provider, or any software at all. All you need is a modem and a router. No software needed.

My Comcast provide triple service: Cable TV, internet and "land line" phone connect through the internet modem/router. Do any of these services require their software running somewhere?

 

[VinceInMT]

I think that's a great project. My photos aren't that important.

Regarding family shots, I didn't mean that we have to print every last one of them. Samples are all others will want. Maybe a photo book from Blurb of family shots would be appreciated by them. I did my first one last year of my grandson's 1st birthday party.

I also scanned all my old 35mm slides of my daughter and made a digital video slide show with music, titles, etc. to playback on a monitor or TV. Originally, I gave the "show" to her on a DVD with spare backup. But then she eliminated DVD readers on her new computer. So, copied all of them onto an SD card which she can plug into the smart TV or computer. Who knows how long those will last. That's why photo prints are the best archival record for the long run I believe.

I think that the importance of family shots all depend on the family. I have a friend who has never owned a camera and they do not have family photo album. He’s a miser and never wanted to spend the money. I’ve casually asked his wife and kids about family photos and they just don’t see them as something they are into. I find that these types of images, by themselves, are of little interest but when coupled with a strong narrative, they support the stories behind them.

It’s like wedding albums. Who looks at those later? I suppose some do. I didn’t hire a photographer for my own wedding but just handed over my camera to my dad, who was also my best man, and asked him to take a few photos. I developed the film, made contact prints, and filed them just like any other film. I didn’t look at them again until a year or two ago when I was scanning all my film. Maybe it’s because it was a small wedding, in my backyard, with only about 12 people there, and took about 10 minutes.

 

[koraks]

Any danger to giving relatives who visit the modem/router's password so they can use my homes' wifi while they're here?

You'd typically give your visitors only the WiFi access key. With this, they cannot enter the management console of the router, which is protected by its own password. Don't give the latter password to anyone unless they have legitimate business changing your router configuration.

Since any device on the local network in principle has direct access to other devices on the LAN, this means that any devices infected with trojans, viruses etc. can wreak havoc on your network even if the human users mean well. If you want to work around this risk, some routers have the possibility of creating a second wireless area for guest access that cordons them off of your private LAN. If you have a lot of visitors, it may make sense to set up something like this.

Personally, I very rarely give my WiFi key to anyone and visitors virtually never ask for it, either. But we have good 4G coverage here, so everyone just uses their mobile data. Besides, visitors come over for social reasons. They tend to not use their phones much when they're here!

 

[Steven Lee]

My Comcast provide triple service: Cable TV, internet and "land line" phone connect through the internet modem/router. Do any of these services require their software running somewhere?

This is a loaded question because, technically speaking, all of those boxes (routers, modems, etc) are just computers running software pre-installed by Comcast. But when they try to convince you to install some kind of desktop / mobile software, that is not necessary. Although it can be helpful for other purposes, I have the AT&T app on my phone to pay my bills and see invoices.

 

[Sirius Glass]

My friend a former Kodak employee has a separate computer from his other computers for email, internet, personal use, et al. That computer is set up with multiple removable hard drives that he does full backups in several formats. He rotates the drives marked with dates marked on them. Some of those drives at time are rotated through a safe deposit box on the other side of Boulder Colorado. Lest one think he is being overly cautious, after doing that for many years, last year a mega fire outside Boulder burnt within a quarter mile [half a kilometer]. He had to content with smoke damage at his home, but the smoke did not see of cause a problem with his removable drives. He said that if he went to outside storage, he would use multiple providers.

 

[koraks]

That computer is set up with multiple removable hard drives that he does full backups in several formats. He rotates the drives marked with dates marked on them.

Back in the days (this would be the 1990s) we had a quite few customers who used removable hard drives for various purposes. They turned out to really need the redundancy, because the drives showed substantially higher malfunction rates due to poor heat management and mostly being carried around. Of course, this isn't relevant for solid state drives, but mechanical drives, especially those old ones from back then, were sensitive to mechanical shocks. This was especially bad when they were spinning, but even when powered off, they would suffer from being moved around. Things have improved, of course. Massively so. But in the kind of scenario you describe, I'd certainly consider using SSD's instead of mechanical drives!

 

[Sirius Glass]

Back in the days (this would be the 1990s) we had a quite few customers who used removable hard drives for various purposes. They turned out to really need the redundancy, because the drives showed substantially higher malfunction rates due to poor heat management and mostly being carried around. Of course, this isn't relevant for solid state drives, but mechanical drives, especially those old ones from back then, were sensitive to mechanical shocks. This was especially bad when they were spinning, but even when powered off, they would suffer from being moved around. Things have improved, of course. Massively so. But in the kind of scenario you describe, I'd certainly consider using SSD's instead of mechanical drives!

I agree, but I can only report what he has told me. He may well have updated to SSD by now, especially after the fire.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I use 4TB Western Digital HD Passport or similar removeable hard drives for backup. The SSD versions are more money although Samsung and SanDisk have them for about 2x the $HD's from WD. I don't really move them around. Will the HD type be sufficient?

 

[VinceInMT]

What did we do before all these digital options?