NAS or Cloud storage?

[MadsRH]

Please help me choose :-k

I'm looking for a way to backup my photos (about 60 GB). I've been looking at a NAS or a cloud solution.

NAS: D-Link ShareCenter Pulse DNS-320 (http://sharecenter.dlink.com/ShareCenter_Meet_The_Family)
+ 2 TB of space!
+ Pay ones 490,- USD
+ Home server for lots of videos/music/FTP/...
+ Ability to host a simple website (not sure if this one does that though)

Google Storage (https://www.google.com/settings/storage/):
- 'Only' 100 GB of space
+ No power costs
+ Safe in case of fire
- Monthly payment 4,99 USD (that's 8 years of service for the amount that the NAS costs)

What do you guys think? or is there a third soultion?

[Grenage]

It's a bit apples and oranges; one is likely more redundant, while the other offers increased storage. If your priority is guaranteeing the safety of your images, cloud storage and a local single drive backup might be best. My experience of budget home NAS' has not been stellar.

Only you can decide.

[Dragonbite]

How much space do you really need?

I have the 25GB SkyDrive connected to my Windows laptop and I set it so everything is saved in the SkyDrive for automatic backups (and accessibility). I am surprised that I have already used about 9GB of space! Six of those are just pictures!

The Google solution provides the benefit of being accessible while away from home and as you mentioned, "house fire" protection.

One down-side of Google is what is your bandwidth? Mine is slow so those 9GB in SkyDrive has taken a loooooong time (piece-by-piece) to synchronize. Plus, if you have to access the files from storage, that depends heavily on your bandwidth.

Are you talking about Google Drive, or Picasa Web? I am curious because I have about 40gb of pictures to backup and right now I am using a networked hard drive solution but that is still vulnerable to house-fire, spiked electricity, and wear-and-tear. Plus I try to keep it "hidden" (or at least not obvious) in case of thieves roaming the house.

Now, if you end up going for the Google solution, that doesn't mean you can't get a network accessible drive, or put an old tower (multiple drive slots) to work as a file server as a backup.

I am very curious to what you go with, and how it works for you. I am also trying to figure out a good solution. I'm even tempted to see about Amazon's web services and what if something can be set up with OwnCloud (a file synchronization program in its infancy).

[Bachstelze]

I would just burn them on a Blu-ray or put them on a SD card...

[MadsRH]

How much space do you really need?

I have the 25GB SkyDrive connected to my Windows laptop and I set it so everything is saved in the SkyDrive for automatic backups (and accessibility). I am surprised that I have already used about 9GB of space! Six of those are just pictures!

The Google solution provides the benefit of being accessible while away from home and as you mentioned, "house fire" protection.

One down-side of Google is what is your bandwidth? Mine is slow so those 9GB in SkyDrive has taken a loooooong time (piece-by-piece) to synchronize. Plus, if you have to access the files from storage, that depends heavily on your bandwidth.

Are you talking about Google Drive, or Picasa Web? I am curious because I have about 40gb of pictures to backup and right now I am using a networked hard drive solution but that is still vulnerable to house-fire, spiked electricity, and wear-and-tear. Plus I try to keep it "hidden" (or at least not obvious) in case of thieves roaming the house.

Now, if you end up going for the Google solution, that doesn't mean you can't get a network accessible drive, or put an old tower (multiple drive slots) to work as a file server as a backup.

I am very curious to what you go with, and how it works for you. I am also trying to figure out a good solution. I'm even tempted to see about Amazon's web services and what if something can be set up with OwnCloud (a file synchronization program in its infancy).

Thank you for that, you make many good points.

Using old computers I already own with something like OwnCloud, have crossed my mind. It's got some cool features I would love, but it wouldn't be a very energy friendly solution with old PCs.

It says "100 GB for Google Drive and Picasa (25 GB gmail)". Click THIS (https://www.google.com/settings/storage/)link and check it out ;-)

[forrestcupp]

Like Dragonbite said, bandwidth is a huge one. An NAS will be a lot faster than the internet. But on the other hand, the Cloud is off site and will have redundancy. It won't be destroyed if there's a tornado or your house burns to the ground.

You have to weigh the pros and cons for yourself. If your files aren't huge, I would personally go the Cloud route, because it's probably a little safer. The only other thing to consider is what happens to your data when you stop paying? If you're using Google Drive or Dropbox, at least you'll still have a local copy.

[Dragonbite]

Thank you for that, you make many good points.

Using old computers I already own with something like OwnCloud, have crossed my mind. It's got some cool features I would love, but it wouldn't be a very energy friendly solution with old PCs.

It says "100 GB for Google Drive and Picasa (25 GB gmail)". Click THIS (https://www.google.com/settings/storage/)link and check it out ;-)

If you could set up OnwCloud on something like Amazon web services or somewhere else it may open up to (virtually) unlimited space. Admittingly, I find Amazon's pricing confusing, but it looks like it is by the bandwidth used to after the initial upload it may peter down to a more reasonable price for maintenance.

I've kinda moved away from PicasaWeb when I find all of my pictures in Google+! Most of these pics are family (kids) and I would rather not have them too public. Changing the visibility is not the most intuitive thing either. Unless they have improved that?

For Example: I just tagged myself in my album via picasaweb.google.com and got +1d by somebody in Google+ which I am about as acquainted to as anybody here on these forums. I don't want my kids' names and pictures being hugely available.

[Dragonbite]

If you are just looking for backing up, another possible solution is CrashPlan (http://www.crashplan.com/).

The software is freely available, cross-platform and allows unlimited backup between your computers. So you could have it backing up to a file server on your network automatically (or backup you desktop to your laptop, and vice verse).

For a fee, you can also back up to their cloud location. This is in addition to the pc-to-pc backups. CrashPlan+ Unlimited=$3/mo (1 computer) and CrashPlan+ Family=$6/mo (1-10 computers).

The nice thing about this is that if you have to restore any files you can do so from your local locations (at a faster rate), but if something catastrophic happens (house fire, theft, etc.) then when you get a new computer you install the software and restore from the cloud.

[mamamia88]

Just get an external harddrive for like $50 then copy and paste all your photos onto it.

[MadsRH]

Just get an external harddrive for like $50 then copy and paste all your photos onto it.

That's what I'm doing at the moment ;)

[VeeDubb]

I'd suggest two things.

1. Redundancy. If they're really important, you need to have at least two backups, ideally in two different locations. i.e. an NAS and cloud storage.

2. Long term needs. If you're just looking to back up jpegs of family photos, the solutions you're looking at are just fine. However, if you're thinking about getting into serious photography, neither of those would be adequate. You'd want to get a higher quality NAS with at least 3 bays so you can run raid 5 (I think it's 5, the one with distributed parody information) and a more robust remote backup service.

[Lars Noodén]

Using old computers I already own with something like OwnCloud, have crossed my mind. It's got some cool features I would love, but it wouldn't be a very energy friendly solution with old PCs.


They wouldn't have to be on the whole time. You could use Wake-On-LAN to fire them up as needed and then shut down when you are done.

Another option is just to buy USB hard drives and use those for your backup.

[mamamia88]

That's what I'm doing at the moment ;)

then what's the real problem? the chances of both hds failing at the same time is slim to none. of course an extra backup is better but you should be fine with that. do you have a ps3? maybe you can slap a big hd in that and copy your photos on there as well. that way you can also view them on your tv.

[Dragonbite]

then what's the real problem? the chances of both hds failing at the same time is slim to none.

House fire
Flooding
Theft
Power Outage (unless you take it with you to the coffee shop or library)
Bad/Faulty house wiring
Bad power strip/surge protector
Bug infestation
EMP


While it isn't likely, it is kinda like insurance... you hope you never need it, but you are thankful when you do! :lolflag:

Since digital pictures are more and more becoming the ONLY pictures of kids as they grow up, if you don't take the time to consider the backup, then if something happens and they're gone you've got nobody else to blame.

[mamamia88]

House fire
Flooding
Theft
Power Outage (unless you take it with you to the coffee shop or library)
Bad/Faulty house wiring
Bad power strip/surge protector
Bug infestation
EMP


While it isn't likely, it is kinda like insurance... you hope you never need it, but you are thankful when you do! :lolflag:

Since digital pictures are more and more becoming the ONLY pictures of kids as they grow up, if you don't take the time to consider the backup, then if something happens and they're gone you've got nobody else to blame.pictures are secondary for me though. and the ones i do care about i upload on photobucket or sites like that. maybe that's an option. i doubt they'll give you 60gb storage though

[Erik1984]

From a data safety point of view (leaving out other aspects like privacy and control) Google cloud is probably the most safe. Cloud + mirror your picture folder to an external HD (much cheaper than a NAS) frequently. That way you can always access your pictures if the original HDD crashes and still have the cloud when they both fail.

[ozonito]

Cloud storage if you want more versatility and mobility...

[Dragonbite]

Here's a question: If you upload your pictures to Google, do they do any resizing/compressing? Is the file you download EXACTLY like the one you upload?

The reason why I ask this is because I also use the SkyDrive and when I manually upload files from the browser it has "resize pictures to xxxx" checked. This means any pictures I upload this way are automatically resized and I don't like that. The process with the SkyDrive synch circumnavigates this thankfully.

Also, if you upload them to Google, how are you going to download them? Are you looking at putting them into Picasa, or as files in Google Drive?

Come to think of it, the Google Drive option would possibly bypass my privacy fears... I'm going to have to look into that.

Of course all of this could be made 100% easier if Google released a Google Drive (synch) program for Linux, but that's another story...:lolflag:

[BrokenKingpin]

I use SpiderOak for backing up and syncing my important data. I find it is better than Dropbox because the client is far better, and offers better security.

[pe7er]

Using old computers I already own with something like OwnCloud, have crossed my mind. It's got some cool features I would love, but it wouldn't be a very energy friendly solution with old PCs.
You could also use plugcomputers like the Sheeva Plug, Dream Plug, Popoplug etc which have a very low energy consumption (5 - 10 Watt).
Note: most of those have an ARM processor, so you'll need an Ubuntu distro that is compatible with ARM: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM

[Roasted]

With the amount of data I have, it makes 0 sense to use cloud services as my main means of backups. I like having control over the box I'm backing up to, even though I'm sure my data would be managed properly on Google's cloud servers. I work in IT so I suppose that comes by nature.

Quite honestly I'll likely always be running a NAS at home, especially now that I've set up video surveillance (Motion) on my property, so feeds are always being saved when things are moving. I put some thought into the hardware that went into that box, so it shouldn't be sucking down power like a top end gaming rig. Based on my watt meter and some usage estimates with the current electricity rate in my area, it should run me about 50 a year to power... a small price when you consider it's over the course of 12 months, but of course you still take a hit on the initial server cost too. I suppose it's a price I'd rather pay.

Having your own NAS doesn't do any justice in regard to a house fire, so the +1 there would go to cloud services. At the same token, cloud servers aren't 100% excluded from natural disasters either. But I suppose cloud services would still take the cake since timing is likely on their side:

NAS - House Fire - Chances are your server is gone.
Cloud - House Fire - The likelihood of cloud services magically losing your data during that time is slim/none, but it's always possible.


Pros and cons to each scenario, some that may sway you to cloud services or vice versa. Personal opinion: I'm never letting go of my NAS.:guitar:

[forrestcupp]

At the same token, cloud servers aren't 100% excluded from natural disasters either. But I suppose cloud services would still take the cake since timing is likely on their side:

NAS - House Fire - Chances are your server is gone.
Cloud - House Fire - The likelihood of cloud services magically losing your data during that time is slim/none, but it's always possible.


That's true, but a decent cloud service is going to have a lot of redundancy in different sites. So it would take a major national disaster, some crazy coincidence, or an intentional attack to accomplish the same thing a house fire would with an NAS.

But you're right that cloud storage isn't for everyone, especially if you deal with a lot of large files frequently. And I'm pretty sure you can get fireproof NAS drives, can't you?