I was recently inspired by a friend of mine who lost a lot of precious computer data to take a good hard look at how I am currently backing up the stuff on my computer.
And what I found was that I really don't have a very good system right now. As it stands, I have a 2 terabyte hard drive on which all of my photos, documents, videos and everything else is stored. If anything happens to that hard drive....it's just all gone. Because of this realization, I opted to invest in a good cloud backup option.
Now there are scores of services which allow for a subscriber to back up their personal data online, but the service I was looking for needed to have a few essential things. For one, it needed to be a long-term option. I will always have computer data to store, and as a photographer, I have enormous amounts of computer data. All computers will eventually die, and if the computer's death comes without warning, it could drag all of your personal data down with it. This is a risk I can't take. I want a service which is provided by a strong, stable company. I wanted a company with a good track record and a consistent standard for good services.
Another factor which is a necessity for me is consistency. I don't want a service which increases the price as the amount of data grows. I wanted to find a service which offers a standard, consistent rate.
The third factor which is very important to me is compatibility with external storage. If the cloud service will only back up my computer, but will not back up external drives which are plugged and un-plugged as needed, then the cloud is useless to me.
After days of comparisons and price checks I went with Crashplan. (here's a link to their website if you want to check them out) The reason I went with them is because I could buy a 4 year subscription for a flat rate which doesn't increase as the amount of data added increases. The plan I bought literally has no data ceiling at all. This means that for the same price I could back up any amount of data. 4 gigabytes, or 88 terabytes, it's all the same. Also, it does not put a limit on the file sizes either. Some services will not allow you to back up files which are over a certain size, Crashplan makes no limitations. Crashplan data, when uploaded to the cloud, is stored in three locations. On my hard drives, in the Crashplan cloud, and at Crashplan's off-site locations. Except for an all-out apocalypse where all computer data is destroyed, it is impossible to loose data stored in this way.
Unfortunately, the sum total of the data on my computer's hard drive plus the data on my external hard drive is upwards of 500 gigabytes. This means that the initial upload will take a LONG TIME. Now, I can, for some extra money, have Crashplan send me an external hard drive which I would then use to back up all my data. I would then send the hard drive back to them, and they would put my data directly into the system, thus eliminating the need for a long draw-out upload process. However, it would take about two weeks for the hard drive to reach me and then get back to them. At that point, there is an added 3-7 days for "data processing". The whole process would take between 2-3 weeks. And this is about the amount of time needed to just simply upload it. So far, the plan is to just upload the data directly, but we'll see how that goes.
Overall I'm pretty happy with my choice and I will be thrilled for 4 worry-free years of data security. If all goes well I can renew the subscription at the end of the 4 years and continue onward. The price was extremely affordable, and the company is very stable and friendly.
Anyway, I guess I'll just be thrilled when the whole uploading process is over...I'll keep you posted.
No comments:
Post a Comment