Backup remotely, locally and to friends/family/work computers ;O)

http://www.crashplan.com

Any of the remote storage sites will be fine. If you are worried then use 2 and duplicate all images across them and pick ones in different countries to be doubly sure!

I use smugmug for photo storage. They have an unlimited storage option and are pretty reasonable on price. Their pro with galleries and the whole shebang is $150 pa which is fairly reasonable. I am on the normal unlimited plan which I think is around $60 pa. Don't know what the file size limits are. They have been increased recently but if you are into large TIFFs then the pro might be your only option. You can set galleries to be invisible and password protected so you don't need to share any photos if you don't want.

Build a Windows Home Server and you have the added functionality of being able to dial-in from outside. Or just use LogMeIn on a standard machine.

What's wrong with remote desktop or vnc?

two words that will never be combined in my house - windows and server

i used to have 5ips and a collection of boxes all with their own name, some of which were on 100% of the time (one linux box was even water cooled for a laugh) and accessible by me from work, but I've simplified my collection (and my life fwiw) these days and have no interest in going back down that route

Remember that for VNC you need to know the remote end IP address (also, need to configure router at that end to forward traffic to a particular PC).

LogMeIn will allow a connection easily for a user with dynamic IP and multiple PCs using DHCP (which is how many people set up a home network, not always using fixed IPs on the LAN). It is a lot easier to talk a new client through setting up LogMeIn on the PC with a problem than explaining how to reconfigure their router to forward to the specific PC, fix the IP so that PC won't switch addresses, etc.

Some IP scanners try to probe for VNC since it is easy to test ports 5900/01/02... and 5800/02/03... Cannot comment on pros/cons of remote desktop, not used it enough.

In reply to a post by jonathanHodd:

Hard disks are famously quoted as being in one of two states - crashed, and about to crash

What do you think remote storage companies use to store things on exactly?

seb

In reply to a post by seb:

What do you think remote storage companies use to store things on exactly?
seb

Nothing quite like quoting out of context is there One would hope that any reputable storage company would be using arrays and backups etc. I would rather pay for a service like that than go buy all the hardware required as it would best fit the income model of my photography

It's all moot as I'd mentioned in a previous post that I'm uploading them all to flickr. As my employers are having images off me each week for free, I'm evening things out by using company bandwidth to upload the images to flickr so I can provide them with what they want, when they want it.

In reply to a post by jonathanHodd:

Nothing quite like quoting out of context is there One would hope that any reputable storage company would be using arrays and backups etc. I would rather pay for a service like that than go buy all the hardware required as it would best fit the income model of my photography

Firstly, you can buy a 2 disk NAS array easily with two 2TB drives in RAID1.. Of course you have risks in that (e.g. fire) and I'm not suggesting an online service woudln't be good, but I've seen so many ISP infrastructures that I rarely believe the sales talk on their websites..

I wouldn't be that sure they take backups either.. That would cost a lot to do (more disks needed.. or lots and lots of tape..)

Best option would be to use local hard drive plus online storage


seb

I thought they kept the bits and bytes of data floating in a cloud by magik.