In response to the Online Storage sites

[becca-becca]

I use both snapfish and shutterfly. I have an external harddrive and also back up on CD's. I also do not erase my memory cards.

Anyway, I was reading on another site about various online storage options. Someone had mentioned mozy and smugmug.

What I am wanting online is that if my house burns down, etc. and all my in-home storage is destroyed, I want to be able to get the actual file back.

Several years ago, our computer crashed and I did lose several files of pictures. They were on snapfish, however, I could only use them on snapfish, not get them back to re-store on my new computer.

I would really like a site with an option to do this, without it being cost-prohibitive. Do any of the sites do this? Does snapfish do this now?

I am making sense? Any help would be appreciated.

THANKS!

 

[tiger95]

I use a product called JungleDisk. It is a front-end to the S3 service provided by Amazon. It takes a little knowledge to get setup, but after that it is set it and forget. It even lets you map a drive so that your backups show up as a drive letter on your system.

 

[MICKEY88]

smugmug is a popular site here on the boards, another option is zenfolio

I chose zenfolio over smugmug because they use mpix as their printing lab..

 

[RussN]

I use a product called JungleDisk. It is a front-end to the S3 service provided by Amazon. It takes a little knowledge to get setup, but after that it is set it and forget. It even lets you map a drive so that your backups show up as a drive letter on your system.

Here are my recommendations..

1. Jungle Disk www.jungledisk.com
2. Carbonite www.carbonite.com
3. Get a USB hard drive and store it at a friends house
4. Picasa Web (upload at full resolution) -- also good to share pictures as well

 

[becca-becca]

Can you retrieve your photos from these sites? I don't know if retrieve is the correct word, but can I get them back from them in file format?

 

[RussN]

Can you retrieve your photos from these sites? I don't know if retrieve is the correct word, but can I get them back from them in file format?

For #1, #2 and #3... Yes you can very easily.

For using a service such as Smugmug or Picasa, you can as well, just much harder and much more time consuming.

 

[MICKEY88]

For #1, #2 and #3... Yes you can very easily.

For using a service such as Smugmug or Picasa, you can as well, just much harder and much more time consuming.

why is it harder and more time consuming with Smugmug or Picasa,
it's fairly simple with zenfolio

 

[RussN]

why is it harder and more time consuming with Smugmug or Picasa,
it's fairly simple with zenfolio

I've never used 'zenfolio' so it may be different... But I have approximately 20,000 photos and if I were to loose all those photos I would have to right click on each photo and then choose 'save as' and save them individually back to my hard drive. Not to mention in most cases the full file resolution is not stored on the website.

Where as, if you used a service such as Jungle Disk it operates just like another hard drive and you can click and drag the files back to your hard drive. Much easier and faster.

For the most part, services such as Smugmug and Picasa are meant to 'show off' your pictures and are not really meant as a full 'backup' of your pictures. I always use the example, if you want to take a wall out in your house... It is much easier to use the right tool such as a sludge hammer. No need to use a bulldozer nor use a regular hammer. Although both would probably work they are not really the right tool for the job.

 

[MICKEY88]

I've never used 'zenfolio' so it may be different... But I have approximately 20,000 photos and if I were to loose all those photos I would have to right click on each photo and then choose 'save as' and save them individually back to my hard drive. Not to mention in most cases the full file resolution is not stored on the website.

Where as, if you used a service such as Jungle Disk it operates just like another hard drive and you can click and drag the files back to your hard drive. Much easier and faster.

For the most part, services such as Smugmug and Picasa are meant to 'show off' your pictures and are not really meant as a full 'backup' of your pictures. I always use the example, if you want to take a wall out in your house... It is much easier to use the right tool such as a sludge hammer. No need to use a bulldozer nor use a regular hammer. Although both would probably work they are not really the right tool for the job.

interesting I would have thought smugmug would be easier,

with zenfolio, if I want to download my pics they have a special downloader, I open that on my pc, log in and it opens up like windows explorer...

I can pic folders or everything and download all at once...

when my stepdaughter was in Italy for a semester I set up a zenfolio account for her, she would upload her pics, then I would download them to the pc at home so there were always 2 copies of everything..

 

[handicap18]

I've never used 'zenfolio' so it may be different... But I have approximately 20,000 photos and if I were to loose all those photos I would have to right click on each photo and then choose 'save as' and save them individually back to my hard drive. Not to mention in most cases the full file resolution is not stored on the website.

Where as, if you used a service such as Jungle Disk it operates just like another hard drive and you can click and drag the files back to your hard drive. Much easier and faster.

For the most part, services such as Smugmug and Picasa are meant to 'show off' your pictures and are not really meant as a full 'backup' of your pictures. I always use the example, if you want to take a wall out in your house... It is much easier to use the right tool such as a sludge hammer. No need to use a bulldozer nor use a regular hammer. Although both would probably work they are not really the right tool for the job.

With smugmug the full file resolution is stored on their servers. They also have an option for storing RAW files in addition to jpeg files.

I understand your point about clicking one image at a time. I'm not sure if smugmug has an option like Mickey88 describes for zenfolio, but I will definitely find out.

Based on that I would think that zenfolio right now would be better because you can use it as a full resolution backup for all your jpegs, "show off" your images and also have an easy way to get them back to your PC.

 

[fitzperry]

Do you really not erase any of your memory cards, or do you just not erase them until you've downloaded and done a backup? If it's the former, how many cards do you have?

We've used Carbonite for backup. It's great, as it is affordable and simple to use. The only drawback I see is that it is just a backup, so if you delete something from your hard drive, then I think it will no longer be stored with Carbonite.

I also back up to an external drive and on dvds, some of which are stored in our fire safe, and some at my dad's house.

 

[safetymom]

You can do bulk downloading of images on Smugmug.

 

[RussN]

Great, it sounds like Smugmug has improved since I last used it and sounds like Smugmug and Zenfolio may have what most people need.

Only last thing I would add is that using a service such as Jungle Disk and Carbonite, you will be able to backup more then just pictures. I encrypt all my data via TrueCrypt and upload it to Amazon via Jungle Disk and now not only do I have a backup of all my pictures, but I also have my taxes, medical records, etc all stored securely on a server.

Additionally as noted in a earlier post, you can have multiple revisions of the file on Jungle Disk, so if you delete and/or overwrite a file you can always get the "original" file back.

I guess it all comes down to what works the best for you... Find a solution that you can stick with and that works the best for you. Backup is no good to you if you don't use it or keep up with it on a regular basis and we all know that problems never happen at a time that is convenient for you.

 

[fitzperry]

Only last thing I would add is that using a service such as Jungle Disk and Carbonite, you will be able to backup more then just pictures. I encrypt all my data via TrueCrypt and upload it to Amazon via Jungle Disk and now not only do I have a backup of all my pictures, but I also have my taxes, medical records, etc all stored securely on a server.

This is an excellent point. My parents' computer bit the dust recently, and they had a large quantity of medical information stored on it. There was a physical hard disk failure, and the estimate to attempt to recover any data from it was in excess of $1000. Fortunately they had hard copies of most of the important stuff and were able to recreate it without that expense in addition to the new computer. Which reminds me, I need to check with my dad and see if he got set up with Carbonite.

 

[alan]

I back up all my data to Carbonite. The inital backup took a long time and was a bit of a nightmare, but now it doesn't take long for anything I put into our "My Documents" are to get backed up.

Advantages? Everything gets backed up to a remote server. Indeed, now that my office has got sheet-feed scanners I've started scanning and backing up all my old bank statements, bills and so forth and have been able to throw away a lot of paper.

According to its market research people, Carbonite's marketing department seems to hang out with some pretty dodgy people (Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and others), but the service they offer is very slick, very reasonably priced and well worth it!

regards,
/alan

 

[GrillMouster]

I've read reviews by people who mistakenly believed that Carbonite would back up all the contents of their My Documents folder. After their hard drives crashed they discovered that only certain file types were backed up by default; they were supposed to select all file types from the preferences menu.

 

[RBennett]

I have a question; I don't think I read this in one of the previous posts. Is one of these sites capable of uploading cds/dvds of pictures without having it stored on your computer? I ask this because we burn all of our pictures on cds/dvds, and most of the time may not keep them on the computer because of size. Like the OP, we're now trying to back-up in multiple areas and I was afraid that if I backed up a cd of pictures from our computer, then when it goes to update and that cd is not there, is it going to delete the pictures from the site?

 

[RussN]

I have a question; I don't think I read this in one of the previous posts. Is one of these sites capable of uploading cds/dvds of pictures without having it stored on your computer? I ask this because we burn all of our pictures on cds/dvds, and most of the time may not keep them on the computer because of size. Like the OP, we're now trying to back-up in multiple areas and I was afraid that if I backed up a cd of pictures from our computer, then when it goes to update and that cd is not there, is it going to delete the pictures from the site?

Any of the sites should be capable of doing this. However, you may have to modify the preferences of the 'application' to tell it not to delete the file when it can no longer be found.

As with all backups, you should always 'test' or 'verify' your backups on a regular basis. I work in the IT fiend and we always do a disaster recovery test for our business twice a year and this is always a reminder for me to go and check my backups as well.

 

[labdogs42]

Smugmug will also send you CD's or DVD's of your entire library if you want them. I use Smugmug AND Carbonite. Love them both! (I use ****terfly, too, but that's mostly for making books and gifts)

 

[Groucho]

I have a question; I don't think I read this in one of the previous posts. Is one of these sites capable of uploading cds/dvds of pictures without having it stored on your computer? I ask this because we burn all of our pictures on cds/dvds, and most of the time may not keep them on the computer because of size. Like the OP, we're now trying to back-up in multiple areas and I was afraid that if I backed up a cd of pictures from our computer, then when it goes to update and that cd is not there, is it going to delete the pictures from the site?

I think most will not do this. (Host files that don't exist on your PC.)

At my company, we recently looked into offering online backup for our customers, as backups are always an issue and most of our customers are fairly small, which doesn't leave a lot of options. (Tape backup is expensive, proper backup software is expensive, so a pair of external USB drives are often what ends up being used.) I did some research and virtually everywhere rates Mozy as being overall the best service. As I mentioned in the other thread, you can get two gigs of backup from them absolutely free. I've used this for some people who only have a limited amount of stuff (documents, etc) to back up. Restoring stuff is simple - it appears as just another drive letter in My Computer. There are alternate ways to restore, too.

However, back to your question - they back up your PC but only what's currently on it. If you delete a file, it is kept for 30 days (in case you need to recover it) and after that... it's gone. I don't believe that they have any options for just storing data.

If you're interested in something like that... you may want to consider something like an account with a web host that offers "unlimited" storage. It's a little more pricey that Mozy (and Carbonite and similar services) but not much... for example, Bluehost is $7/month vs $5/month for Mozy. But with Bluehost, you can use it as a manual file backup service and FTP the contents of all your DVDs to their servers. There they will sit forever until you go in and delete them. This won't work so well for doing live backups of your PC, though.