Forumite Members › General Topics › Tech › Software Talk › Online Backups
- This topic has 11 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 2 months ago by
Dave Rice.
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December 16, 2019 at 9:51 pm #38898
I’m finally getting around to setting up an online backup, and I’m after some advice (not like me, I know 😀 ). I use Google Photos and Amazon Photos on my phone to backup my photos, and OneDrive for some files that I need to use regularly. All three have their downsides though.
Google Photos uses compression, and on the phone at least, doesn’t seem to respect existing folders. Not a huge issue, but it might be when I start putting my proper photos on. I’m an amateur photographer and have hundreds of gigabytes of organised photos.
Amazon Photos on the phone is painfully slow, and slows the phone to a crawl. It also manages to choke my internet connection for the whole house. It’s also only uploading on wifi and at seemingly random times. Google Photos uploads fairly quickly, if not straight away, but I’ve just checked Amazon, and the last photos are from two days ago. Not great if I lose my phone.
OneDrive seems to be pretty good, but only syncs its own folders, and constantly nags me about low space.
Has anyone got any experience with these, and do you have any suggestions please? Dropbox is completely out of the question since it renamed thousands of my photos without permission a few years ago. Anything that can detect duplicates would be handy too, as I’ve got quite a lot floating around.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, if I go for OneDrive, I’ll add Ellen and Alice to it so they get 1TB each too. They’re both using the free Google Photos storage now, so could do with backups too. (Alice is only three, but likes to take photos on her restricted OnePlus One, and saves drawings through the Cbeebies app 😀 )
December 17, 2019 at 10:37 am #38903I use OneDrive as my main back-up option, mainly as with Office 365 the cost per user for 1TB is about as cheap as it gets. I find it reliable and reasonably easy but it is not the quickest. MS really messed up years ago when they changed the OneDrive online/offline features (you used to be able to see and access your entire online 1TB from even a 16GB tablet, and you could choose which folders to sync locally as well. They lost that with Windows 10 – but I did think they had bought back some “selective sync” functionality? I got rid of the app an back up manually via the browser. Cave man I know but I want a back up of specific files not to sync everything.
For photos I use google photos for unlimited backups (compressed but still excellent quality) and I manually bung the uncompressed versions of ones I want to keep on to OneDrive.
Four of us using OneDrive with 1TB each works out typically around £10-£12 each per year (using Office 365 Home codes from ebay – but even full price is reasonable for multiple users).
December 17, 2019 at 11:14 am #38904Use your Synology. There are apps to do exactly what you want to do.
December 17, 2019 at 12:19 pm #38906Use your Synology. There are apps to do exactly what you want to do.
I’ve got some of the photos on the Synology already, but I’m looking for something outside the house in case of a fire or break in etc. I keep forgetting about the Synology too. I’m so used to not having it that I can’t get it into my head that it’s there 😣😂
For photos I use google photos for unlimited backups (compressed but still excellent quality) and I manually bung the uncompressed versions of ones I want to keep on to OneDrive.
That’s a good point. It won’t hurt to have a backup on both. Trying to remember to do any of it manually is the problem at the moment though.
Four of us using OneDrive with 1TB each works out typically around £10-£12 each per year (using Office 365 Home codes from ebay – but even full price is reasonable for multiple users).
I’m a bit wary of the Ebay codes now, after my last one was deactivated. Like you say though, the full price isn’t bad for what you get.
December 17, 2019 at 1:06 pm #38907I’m referring to the 365 codes that stack on your existing account (i.e. add a year to what you’ve already got). I know some of the “too good to be true” offers for new subs are shut down by MS. I’ve been adding codes to my original account for a good few years without issue – be interested if you’ve added a year that way and had it chalked off later.
December 17, 2019 at 1:48 pm #38908Photo Station is the app for the server, allows you to create albums, organise and share them.
DS photo for android or iOS which can be set to auto backup (wait for WiFi) on the device the same as Google photos. Also allows you to view albums etc.
Synology C2 Backup is built in as a target in HyperBackup. €10 p.a. for 100GB, €25 for 300GB, €60 for 1TB
DS and Google Photos sit together quite happily on my phone. Together with a Panasonic app that allows me to access my camera from my phone or iPad, I use a mixture of all three on my travels. Google photo is great for quick and dirty stuff, the Synology for long term albums.
December 17, 2019 at 3:04 pm #38909Use Arq on my Mac to backup to a Onedrive corporate account (the Uni provides me with Office 365 – Arq ensures that it’s encrypted at rest) and Synology gets backed up to Synology C2. I also store a copy of files at work, using the SFTP server and Freefilesync to copy between the Synology and work as that does SFTP sync.
Then I have multiple file copies at home, as I also have Time Machine hooked up to my Mac and the Synology acts as a Resilo Sync node, that sync all the files across my devices.
I had considered throwing Backblaze in to the mix, but the offsite copy at work sort of covers that, and would be quicker to recover from in event of a house fire.
"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett
December 17, 2019 at 3:17 pm #38910As you are a serious photographer, the one tip I would give is to check the file integrity of whichever backup system you use. jpeginfo is free, quick and dirty but it checks for gross header errors. There are paid for systems that do a more thorough job. Whatever you decide do not do as I did and put your faith in untested backups.
Based purely on personal experience I would avoid compressing jpeg files. It adds little in file size savings and adds a layer of risk. I would also avoid the cloud as a primary backup, and use solely as secondary backup. (Do read the t&c for the backup provider some almost want copyright on your work!)
December 17, 2019 at 6:54 pm #38914For very serious long term storage a Synology NAS with an Intel CPU allows you to implement BTRFS volumes that stop bit rot.
“Btrfs provides checksums for data and metadata, generates two copies of metadata, and then verifies the checksums during each read process. Once discovering a mismatch (silent data corruption), the Btrfs file system is able to auto-detect corrupted files (silent data corruption) with mirrored metadata, and recover broken data using the supported RAID volumes, including RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10, F1, and SHR“.
SHR is Synology’s own Hybrid RAID system which makes using mismatched drives sizes more efficient. Really comes into it’s own with >dual slot chassis. It’s a lot easier to add drives and expand volumes than traditional RAID.
December 19, 2019 at 5:22 pm #39001I’m referring to the 365 codes that stack on your existing account (i.e. add a year to what you’ve already got).
Do you have to sign up with a normal MS code first, or can I just start with one of these from Ebay?
DS photo for android or iOS which can be set to auto backup (wait for WiFi) on the device the same as Google photos. Also allows you to view albums etc. Synology C2 Backup is built in as a target in HyperBackup. €10 p.a. for 100GB, €25 for 300GB, €60 for 1TB
Thanks Dave, I forgot about DS Photo. I set it up when I first got the Synology, but set it just to give me access to scanned photos that I was working on. Because I was concentrating on those, I forgot to go back and set up the photo backup afterwards. I’ve been copying my phone photos to my computer manually…
The more I’m thinking about it, the more likely it is that I’m going to go with MS for now, then add in the C2 backup once I’ve got everything sorted out. I’ve got close to 1TB of photos, plus I can add Alice and Ellen for near enough the same cost. I’ve got a second MS account that I used to use for job searches, so I’ll backup the photos through that and everything else through my main account, plus put it on the Synology and Google Photos.
I can probably delete about half of the photos, as I’ve still got a copy of pretty much everything, including when I was learning how to use the camera. My music is the same. I used to rip a copy of every CD I bought, even if it was for a present. My brother in law went through a Demi Lovato phase a few years ago, and the MP3s are just gathering metaphorical dust.
Thanks for the advice guys 🙂
December 19, 2019 at 5:39 pm #39002I signed up originally with a free “personal” 365 code that came with a Linx tablet. Not sure if this still works, but you used to be able to sign up for office personal as per above (cheaper), stack another 4 “personal” codes and then upgrade to “home” – which then applied the upgrade to the 4 extra years you stacked (i.e. converted single-user “personal” to multi-user “home”)
I’m pretty sure you can create a free MS account and add a “365 Home” code that you buy to it even if the above hack has been shut off.
December 20, 2019 at 9:28 am #39017The Synology has an app called Cloud Sync, I’m sure you can guess what it does! More on it here.
Until recently Google used to allow you to sync your photos with Google Drive and I used this to mop up anything that may have been missed. Then on a weekly basis I’d look in the folder and move anything I wanted to keep to it’s proper place. You could do this on a reverse basis with One Drive i.e. use OD as a second copy of the NAS (it’s not backup as it’s a real time sync).
My new NAS has an Intel CPU which allows me to use Active Backup for Business which backs up my business Office 365 Sharepoint stores etc.
So you can, and I do, use various Cloud stores and still retain control of your data. Cloud Sync also makes it easy to migrate from one system to another using the NAS sync share as a middle man.
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