Restoring from the cloud

<p>In <a href="/digital-darkroom-forum/00bG62">this thread</a> a couple of weeks ago, there was a discussion of backing up to the cloud, and that "initial seeding can take weeks/months..."</p>

<p>Has anyone had to restore an entire drive from a cloud backup?</p>

<p>How long does/will it take to restore ~500GB of photo files with a download speed of ~20 Mbs?</p>

<p>Thanks,<br>

<br /><Chas><br /><br /></p>

<p> </p>

<p>Rough guess, about 70 hours... 500GB is 500,000MB, which is about 5,000,000Mb (B = bytes, or 8 b = bits, and add a couple for parity & overhead) @ 20 Mbps download, that comes to 250,000 seconds, divided by 3600 (seconds in an hour), gives 69.44 hours.</p>

<p>Of course, this assumes the stream has no contention (other traffic), and is uninterrupted.</p>

<p>I've heard that many cloud services will send you a hard drive with your data rather than doing the download. Not sure what fee, if any, there would be for that. </p>

<p>They send you a hard drive?! There's profit in there somewhere.</p>

<p>What an odd business model.</p>

<p>Wonder if a cloud service company would hire my computer to copy other folk's personal data?</p>

<p>Some will indeed send a drive - for short-term use. Or, a simple USB thumb drive. They'll include return shipping, too. Or not. It depends on who you're doing business with and what level of service you've <em>paid for</em>. If you've got half a terabyte of data up on someone's cloud, you've got a lot of eggs in one basket, that's for sure.<br /><br /><br />Big drives are cheap. Just use a couple and rotate them around different physical storage locations. Use a cloud service to back up the project you're currently working on, just in case - that way you're dealing with a couple or three GB or so. More than that is just too unwieldy in most cases (or for most internet connections, so far).</p>

<p>The hard drives are a trivial portion of the cost of this whole exercise. NewEgg is selling 1TB drives this morning for $89.99. As Matt says a good service will loan you one, or even just sell it at their discounted price as part of the transaction. Good service providers now support seeding of the initial upload from a hard drive, and will overnight one to you if you run into an emergency situation.</p>

<p>As I mentioned on that other thread that was linked I think cloud is great as one element of a back-up/archive strategy, but I would definitely use some localized component as well, and for me that's multiple, regularly swapped removable hard drives. </p>

<p>If the cloud service is going to accept my HD as the input for my backup, then send me an HD if I need to restore, why should I not just keep a backup HD in my safe deposit box and rotate them regularly?</p>

<p>I mean, what makes cloud backup more compelling than a pair of HDs with one stored off-site?</p>

<p><Chas><br /><br /></p>

<blockquote>

<p>I mean, what makes cloud backup more compelling than a pair of HDs with one stored off-site?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Immediate access to specific files from pretty much anywhere on the planet. That sort of thing.</p>

<p>What makes cloud backup more compelling is the ability to move one or a bunch of images around once you've established the based. The reason you might need a HD sent to you is if you've lost a large number number of images and need to restore all of them. I have fairly good internet connectivity, and by my last calculation it would take almost two weeks to upload, or download all of my images. </p>

<p>I'll chip in with a similar issue - cloud file management. After a bit of research I went with Justcloud.<br>

Figured I could use it as a file backup. After testing what it did with my files - I backed up the contents of my documents folder successfully, all present and correct - I signed up for the 'pro' account.<br>

So the upload was just a test, and I was ready upload the real stuff. Time to remove test data...I discovered there was no global delete, no folder delete, and no multiple file delete. In essence I had to individually delete each file at ~45secs a time. I had >25,000 files uploaded. Tech support had no mechanism for global delete - so I closed my account on the spot (despite having paid for a year iirc). I hope 'account closed' means they finally removed my files.<br>

I wonder what would have happened if I had needed to do a backup.</p>

What is compelling about cloud services is pro grade archiving, and ease of use. Access from the Internet is not the

biggest factor. You could make a home server and expose it to the internet.

 

There are several reasons why I do not use a service. First is company longevity, too much turn over on the net. Next, is

a change of service agreements. Or, a company may just decide to get out of the storage business to do something

more lucrative. And, the interfacess and strategies are geard towards the non-photographer who has relatively small data

storage needs. Last, is what has been stated here, the typical Internet connection is just too slow and limited in allowed

bandwidth.

 

Will this change? Yep, and it may be more attractive soon.

<blockquote>

<p>What is compelling about cloud services is pro grade archiving...</p>

</blockquote>

<p>What is "pro grade archiving" as opposed to some form of backup?</p>

<p><Chas><br /><br /></p>

<p>"Pro" archiving would mean things like multi-generation versioning (not just the most recent version that got uploaded), perhaps things like file check-in/check-out, encryption, and other more serious-to-the-IT-guys stuff ... possibly including logging, documentation, and access controls as needed to support legal requirements (say, perhaps, you're handling files related to something medical, and the nightmare of HIPPA regulation suddenly comes into play - that sort of thing). </p>

<p>Matt, I think that you're talking about a version or revision control system, and I don't see any of the popular inexpensive cloud backup services offering such yet.</p>

<p><Chas><br /><br /></p>