Cloud solutions - can you trust them?

gilbouk

gilbouk

Suspended / Banned
Messages
3,527
Name
Gil
Edit My Images
Yes
Been looking through some of my files on onedrive today and noticed some of my pictures have been spoilt

35578960081_5f5e021d24_c.jpg

Capture+_2017-07-04-08-51-30 by Gilbo B - Flickr2BBcode LITE

Does anybody trust 3rd party cloud solutions like icloud photos, dropbox, googledrive, or onedrive to look after all of their pictures? I do keep a backup but Im worried these pictures were spoilt before my most recent backup.
 
Do you mean 'Do I trust the Cloud as a backup' or 'Do I trust the Cloud to be my PRIMARY storage'?

Personally, my PRIMARY source is my PC.
My Backup is my NAS
My Second backup is a removable drive (connected to backup, then disconnected).
A sample of images then get uploaded to Flickr or Facebook (depending on the target audience).

So for me, the Could is not even a backup, but just a display mechanism.

Putting your trust in a 3rd party for ALL your photos is a step too far - as a backup, perhaps (depending on volume), but never as primary.
 
The cloud is just another way to say 'someone else's computer' ;-)

Many businesses use cloud based solutions for critical data so there are solutions out there that work if you are willing to pay.

In the case of using cloud as your primary storage, if you want to do this, look for a solution with raw data storage, that will not try to do anything with images. OneDrive etc sees image files and tries to display them, so there is always the risk of corruption.
 
NEVER rely on just one backup for important data.

I backup my photos to several sources including DVDs or BluRay, HDDs, and to One Drive and Mega.

So if any 1 or even more go down I can be reasonably certain of still having 12 years of photos preserved.
 
Faldrax said:
Do you mean 'Do I trust the Cloud as a backup' or 'Do I trust the Cloud to be my PRIMARY storage'?

Personally, my PRIMARY source is my PC.
My Backup is my NAS
My Second backup is a removable drive (connected to backup, then disconnected).
A sample of images then get uploaded to Flickr or Facebook (depending on the target audience).

So for me, the Could is not even a backup, but just a display mechanism.

Putting your trust in a 3rd party for ALL your photos is a step too far - as a backup, perhaps (depending on volume), but never as primary.
Click to expand...

I've been using it as a primary and backing up from it onto HD. Im realising if something goes wrong and I only have 1 backup, likelyhood is by the time I notice the problem Ive backed up the corrupted / lost files.
 
I have all my files locally with important things backed up and stored at a different location. I only use external sites such as Flickr as a host so I can link to images without needing my own website. In fact, I often simply use the Upload a File button here rather than upload to a host and link to it.
 
Not unless you have an account manager/SLA with the cloud provider
:)
 
I don't see why people think they can't. The way I see it companies which rely on IT systems invest far more then I could on maintaining their systems. I'll trust them to maintain a backup.

neil_g said:
Personally I'd rather have a hard drive in my drawer at work, but then I have a large amount of data that's take too long to upload and keep in sync.
Click to expand...

With cable upload speeds, although the initial backup is painful (took a month for about 3 TB) then keeping it synced isn't a big deal.
 
boyfalldown said:
I


With cable upload speeds, although the initial backup is painful (took a month for about 3 TB) then keeping it synced isn't a big deal.
Click to expand...
Oh it's definitely subjective. I product too much data to be patient about it.

I just have a rotation of usb3 drives that are on constant sync, just whip one out in the morning and take it to work, bring another one home in the evening and plug in to resync that. And repeat as necessary. It's not perfect but I can live with some minor loss if something happened before a swap.
 
It all depends on how much effort you want to put in and how much you want to spend.

Another backup option is something like carbonite. Just sits in the background and backs up a copy of everything on the PC to the cloud. You never have to worry if your machine crashes. But it is 'current copy' of your machine, files are deleted from the back up 30 days after you delete from PC.
 
Stevieraith said:
It all depends on how much effort you want to put in and how much you want to spend.

Another backup option is something like carbonite. Just sits in the background and backs up a copy of everything on the PC to the cloud. You never have to worry if your machine crashes. But it is 'current copy' of your machine, files are deleted from the back up 30 days after you delete from PC.
Click to expand...

No Linux client. Natch.
It looks like the client encrypts the data before it's sent along the wire - so does that mean the user gets to choose the encryption key and keep it to themselves?
 
neil_g said:
Oh it's definitely subjective. I product too much data to be patient about it.

I just have a rotation of usb3 drives that are on constant sync, just whip one out in the morning and take it to work, bring another one home in the evening and plug in to resync that. And repeat as necessary. It's not perfect but I can live with some minor loss if something happened before a swap.
Click to expand...

I might just do that myself and forget the cloud storage and just use it for sharing collections.
 
Garbage in, garbage out. Almost certainly corrupted during upload, unless you're using some micky mouse outfit being run from someones garage.
 
afasoas said:
No Linux client. Natch.
It looks like the client encrypts the data before it's sent along the wire - so does that mean the user gets to choose the encryption key and keep it to themselves?
Click to expand...

Not on Carbonite, the encryption is there to ensure that you can only restore through a Carbonite client, and that the data is encrypted in transit on the Internet. I think there are a couple of others that you do get to choose the encryption key though.
 
I am paranoid about losing images so as well as being on my HD (just the jpgs) I have the RAW and jpg on a separate drive at home, plus dropbox plus jpg only on icloud.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top