Author Topic: What is the best bang for the buck online data storage to keep personal files?  (Read 3076 times)

sequoia

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I have ~200GB of photos, video, etc that I like to back up in the cloud. The size is growing. I been manually backing it up into different PC plus I have a server at home, and a copy of the disc in safety box. It not real-time obviously.

Since this is personal files, I am not trying to save couple of bucks here and there. Reliability, and security is priority no 1. I am thinking Google drive which has $10/month for 1TB which sounds good to me. Any thoughts?

windypig

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Amazon Prime members get unlimited photo storage and 5GB of non-photo cloud storage. Search "Amazon prime photos"

Amazon Drive (if you have more than just photos) has a $60/year for 1TB plan.


sequoia

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Amazon Prime members get unlimited photo storage and 5GB of non-photo cloud storage. Search "Amazon prime photos"

Amazon Drive (if you have more than just photos) has a $60/year for 1TB plan.

Oh thank you. Did not know about Amazon Drive.

jamesbond007

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I have ~200GB of photos, video, etc that I like to back up in the cloud. The size is growing. I been manually backing it up into different PC plus I have a server at home, and a copy of the disc in safety box. It not real-time obviously.

Since this is personal files, I am not trying to save couple of bucks here and there. Reliability, and security is priority no 1. I am thinking Google drive which has $10/month for 1TB which sounds good to me. Any thoughts?

I use OneDrive by Microsoft. I pay $100 a year for a TB. Good thing about this is that I can share the plan with 4 others (each get their own account and their own 1TB of storage, and full office suite download). So I pay only $20 a year for 1 TB share on OneDrive. Can't be beat. All features are on par with Google. File organization is better than Google's implementation IMO. No issues syncing, retrieving from anywhere whatsoever. Very happy so far.

Aggie1999

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A while back if you bought Office 365 annual subscription you got X amount of online storage included. It was cheaper buying the Office subscription than paying for the storage separately. No clue if that is still the case.

Here's one of the most important questions for me. Which services have clients that allow you to easily encrypt the files with your own private key that is not shared with the storage provider? I wouldn't put anything important in the cloud without this option. One can always encrypt each file in a 7zip archive or something but that takes time.

2Birds1Stone

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I love google drive.

sequoia

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Here's one of the most important questions for me. Which services have clients that allow you to easily encrypt the files with your own private key that is not shared with the storage provider? I wouldn't put anything important in the cloud without this option. One can always encrypt each file in a 7zip archive or something but that takes time.

Very good point. Care to share how you did this? I assume you are using something like truecrypt?

RyanAtTanagra

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I use Amazon S3 to back up about 150GB of data.  Costs about $2/month.

Sibley

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I'm going to ask the obvious question. What do you have that is 200 GB?

May I suggest some digital decluttering? If nothing else, you're going to feel really stupid if you realize you have the same 500 mg video in triplicate. It can happen pretty easily. Just ask my former roommate, who with some help realized that she had 4TB in duplicate files (yes, that's terrabytes, not gigabytes. She's worse than you). Her storage needs decreased drastically after de-duping and purging unneeded files.

RyanAtTanagra

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May I suggest some digital decluttering?

That's a good point.  The only reason I have 150GB to back up is because it includes all my music.  Of photos I have less than 10gb, and that's going back to 2001.  If you're like most, you don't just take one picture of someone/something, you take 5 and figure you'll save the best one, but then never actually go back and pick the best so you can delete the other 4.  It's easy to fall behind and make it feel overwhelming, but it's cathartic to actually go through and organize photos.

ketchup

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I'm going to ask the obvious question. What do you have that is 200 GB?

May I suggest some digital decluttering? If nothing else, you're going to feel really stupid if you realize you have the same 500 mg video in triplicate. It can happen pretty easily. Just ask my former roommate, who with some help realized that she had 4TB in duplicate files (yes, that's terrabytes, not gigabytes. She's worse than you). Her storage needs decreased drastically after de-duping and purging unneeded files.
There are utilities you can use to scan for duplicate files.  I don't remember which one I've used in the past, but there are many.

You're very right about this.  My GF is a pro photographer and for a while her files were very messy.  Luckily I was able to de-duplicate plenty of her old stuff and we have her new stuff sanely organized.  I think she's at about 14TB of photos now, so having duplicates (not including backups) of stuff would get out of hand pretty quickly.

sequoia

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I'm going to ask the obvious question. What do you have that is 200 GB?

May I suggest some digital decluttering? If nothing else, you're going to feel really stupid if you realize you have the same 500 mg video in triplicate. It can happen pretty easily. Just ask my former roommate, who with some help realized that she had 4TB in duplicate files (yes, that's terrabytes, not gigabytes. She's worse than you). Her storage needs decreased drastically after de-duping and purging unneeded files.

You may suggest, and no, I am not stupid :) There are not replicate pics or videos in my 200GB. Yes, I do take a lot of pics... 

EDIT: I do not take as many pics as my professional photographer friend, but I realize I do take a lot of pics.
« Last Edit: November 07, 2017, 12:27:13 PM by sequoia »

dreaming

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Flickr gives you 1 TB of storage for free.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!