is there a place to store raw or dng files online?

wheresdavid

There has to be a better way. i have been traveling now for quite some time and I am constantly wrestling with the same issue - how to store my photos. I have had external hard drives (they all failed or became corrupted), DVDs - not a good option because here in asia (at least Vietnam) they are all pirated and don't burn or vendors try to charge you $3.5 per DVD! then there is the cost of shipping them or the weight of carrying them not to mention that they can get lost or damaged in shipping.

I shoot in raw and convert my files to DNG in lightroom and then export as jps and upload some of the better ones to my smugmug account. i would like to have a "safe" place/format to store my DNG files on. Do you know of service online where i can store my DNG files? I did a google search and didn't come up with anything.

cheers,

Dave

ps i know there is the upload time but in asia the internet is fast and most hotels have Wireless so i can upload while i sleep

Richard

I don't know of anything specifically meant for pics, but there are a number of online backup services you might want to consider. Amazon's S3 is well known. If you are talking about terabytes of data, it can get expensive, but you only pay for what you use (storage and transfer).

Cheers,

PeterLyons

http://www.photoshelter.com

Andy

I keep my RAWs online with Amazon's S3, and use JungleDisk to manage it. You can also use other tools, S3Fox is one.

S3 is awesome, we use it internally at SmugMug

Personally, I have 7+ years of RAWs archived up on S3, and love how I can get to them from anywhere, anytime I want. All for less than the cost of a couple hard drives per year.

wheresdavid

What is the difference between say mozy and amazon s3
i ran accross some older threads that talked about services like mozy and granite (sp) and I was wondering what the differences are. also what are the advantages / disadvantages of using say amazon s3 vs mozy

thanks
dave

Andy wrote:

I keep my RAWs online with Amazon's S3, and use JungleDisk to manage it. You can also use other tools, S3Fox is one.

S3 is awesome, we use it internally at SmugMug

Personally, I have 7+ years of RAWs archived up on S3, and love how I can get to them from anywhere, anytime I want. All for less than the cost of a couple hard drives per year.

OffTopic

wheresdavid wrote:

i ran accross some older threads that talked about services like mozy and granite (sp) and I was wondering what the differences are. also what are the advantages / disadvantages of using say amazon s3 vs mozy

thanks
dave

Me too, especially after I priced out S3 and saw that it would cost me well over $30 a month if I were to never shoot another photo to add to my storage requirements. Carbonite is only $49.95 per year and Mozy is $4.95 for unlimited storage. Although I do remember reading somewhere that at one of them "unlimited" isn't really unlimited. I'm sure it's a matter of getting what you pay for...but S3 seems a bit pricey for a hobbyist and that is a huge price difference.

greenpea

OffTopic wrote:

Me too, especially after I priced out S3 and saw that it would cost me well over $30 a month if I were to never shoot another photo to add to my storage requirements.

The problem I see with mozy and carbonite, is they are designed as back up services NOT storage services. So they are perfect if you are worried about your computers harddrive crashing, but they are not set up to storing more data than what you can store on your computer.

S3 and Iron Mountain are the two that I know of that are set up for storing data, and I've heard of people using Dream Host for storing data since they offer sooooo much space for soooo cheap.

I'm storing 70+ GB on S3 and its around $10 a month.

PeterLyons

Andy wrote:

I keep my RAWs online with Amazon's S3, and use JungleDisk to manage it. You can also use other tools, S3Fox is one.

S3 is awesome, we use it internally at SmugMug

Personally, I have 7+ years of RAWs archived up on S3, and love how I can get to them from anywhere, anytime I want. All for less than the cost of a couple hard drives per year.

I can't say if it breaks down the same at all storage levels, but PhotoShelter is less expensive than S3 for some archives. Look at a 2 TB library. On S3 that'll cost $300 per month, or $3600 per year. On Photoshelter, it'll be $2000 per year, and I don't believe there are additional fees for accessing the data.

rdlugosz

I think S3 is too much money for use as a backup solution when compared to Carbonite or Mozy. The key differentiator with S3, of course, is that you are able to access your files from anywhere - it is an Online Drive as opposed to a Backup Service.

I've got several hundred GBs at Mozy (see link in my sig) and I like it that way... I HOPE TO NEVER DOWNLOAD A SINGLE MEGABYTE FROM THEM! It's a third level backup, meaning that if I'm downloading from Mozy then my house & office are toast!

For "anywhere access" to your files, I'd recommend running some type of file server with a web front end on your workstation. Be sure it's running on SSL and requires a solid password for access or you're asking for trouble! To me this just seems like a more viable solution than S3 + Jungle Disk for large volume storage when cost is a factor.

Rhuarc

rdlugosz wrote:

I think S3 is too much money for use as a backup solution when compared to Carbonite or Mozy. The key differentiator with S3, of course, is that you are able to access your files from anywhere - it is an Online Drive as opposed to a Backup Service.

I've got several hundred GBs at Mozy (see link in my sig) and I like it that way... I HOPE TO NEVER DOWNLOAD A SINGLE MEGABYTE FROM THEM! It's a third level backup, meaning that if I'm downloading from Mozy then my house & office are toast!

For "anywhere access" to your files, I'd recommend running some type of file server with a web front end on your workstation. Be sure it's running on SSL and requires a solid password for access or you're asking for trouble! To me this just seems like a more viable solution than S3 + Jungle Disk for large volume storage when cost is a factor.

It's nice to ehar you have this much at Mozy with no problems. I currently have 50GB with them, and I was wondering howmuch higher I could go before I had problems.

This is exactly what I do. Mozy is my 4th level backup. (1 backup to external drive, 1 at the office, and then my main working drive, then last is my Mozy backup) I also have access to all of my files using a great FTP server called CrushFTP. It runs as a service on my system and lets me have easy access to any of my files from anywhere. It has a web service and web based ftp program built in so I never even have to install a program to access the ftp server.

jfriend

wheresdavid wrote:

There has to be a better way. i have been traveling now for quite some time and I am constantly wrestling with the same issue - how to store my photos. I have had external hard drives (they all failed or became corrupted), DVDs - not a good option because here in asia (at least Vietnam) they are all pirated and don't burn or vendors try to charge you $3.5 per DVD! then there is the cost of shipping them or the weight of carrying them not to mention that they can get lost or damaged in shipping.

I shoot in raw and convert my files to DNG in lightroom and then export as jps and upload some of the better ones to my smugmug account. i would like to have a "safe" place/format to store my DNG files on. Do you know of service online where i can store my DNG files? I did a google search and didn't come up with anything.

cheers,

Dave

ps i know there is the upload time but in asia the internet is fast and most hotels have Wireless so i can upload while i sleep

I am now considering Dreamhost. For $120/yr (or a bit less if you prepay more years), you get a whole hosted web-site, but germaine to this discussion, you get 500GB of hard drive space that goes up by 2GB per week every week and you get 5TB of xfer bytes per month. If you use a significant amount of storage, it's way, way less expensive than S3. It's probably not quite as robust as S3, though Dreamhost says they regularly snapshot your drive onto RAID, so I wouldn't consider it as my only backup source. But I already have a local backup and I'm looking for an offsite backup so it seems like a decent deal for that.

Here's their offer: http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting.html.

My guess is that Dreamhost is playing the statistics game (like Smugmug is with their unlimited storage) and most people don't actually use their drive allotment so if you use a lot you are getting a better-than-average deal. S3, on the other hand, only charges you for what you use so there's no advantage to the larger users.

OffTopic

rdlugosz wrote:

I've got several hundred GBs at Mozy (see link in my sig) .

Your review of Mozy was very helpful, thank you. And for anyone considering Mozy, it's definitely worth taking the time to read through some of rdlugosz's current blog postings!

rdlugosz

jfriend wrote:

I am now considering Dreamhost. For $120/yr (or a bit less if you prepay more years), you get a whole hosted web-site, but germaine to this discussion, you get 500GB of hard drive space that goes up by 2GB per week every week and you get 5TB of xfer bytes per month. If you use a significant amount of storage, it's way, way less expensive than S3. It's probably not quite as robust as S3, though Dreamhost says they regularly snapshot your drive onto RAID, so I wouldn't consider it as my only backup source. But I already have a local backup and I'm looking for an offsite backup so it seems like a decent deal for that.

Here's their offer: http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting.html.

My guess is that Dreamhost is playing the statistics game (like Smugmug is with their unlimited storage) and most people don't actually use their drive allotment so if you use a lot you are getting a better-than-average deal. S3, on the other hand, only charges you for what you use so there's no advantage to the larger users.

Dude... that's a killer deal!! I may drop my VPS and go with a few of these accounts.

DavidTO

I know Mike Lane uses DH. He seems happy with it.

jfriend

rdlugosz wrote:

Dude... that's a killer deal!! I may drop my VPS and go with a few of these accounts.

Well, maybe the deal is too good to be true. I just found out Dreamhost's terms of service require that the content stored be used in service of the web-site. See these two postings here and here for some discussion of the topic.

OffTopic

A good deal gets even better!

http://dh.promo-codes.us/posts/dreamhost-promo-codes

OffTopic

jfriend wrote:

Well, maybe the deal is too good to be true. I just found out Dreamhost's terms of service require that the content stored be used in service of the web-site. See these two postings here and here for some discussion of the topic.

hmmm...guess I posted those discounts codes too quickly...