Amazon Glacier Backup

[tnis0612]

Anyone tried this? $.01 per GB per month for storage. They require you to keep the files on there for 3 months before deleting them (or else pay pro-rated fee that is equivalent to 3 months anyway) so I was thinking of using them to upload something like 100GB of RAW files from a wedding as soon as I get home, and then deleting them from Amazon Glacier after 3 months once i've delivered everything. I would then still have the RAW files on my PC plus all of the high res JPEGs in Smugmug.

100gb would cost me a total of $3 per wedding. Seems pretty cheap and easy for offsite storage that will ensure that I can't somehow lose the RAW files before i'm done editing and delivering them to the bride/groom.

http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/pricing/

[tim]

Glacier's meant for long term storage, you might be better off with S3. You'd be even better off with a hard drive that you keep offsite though.

Assuming a 2Mbps upload (which is sometimes all you get to one server even if you have a 10Mbps upload pipe) 100GB would take 5.2 days to upload. If you can upload at 10Mbps (which I doubt) that's 1 day. If you culled first that would come down a lot. Internet speeds aren't generally good enough yet for bulk backups, once you can get a consistent 100Mbps up then maybe it'll be more practical.

How are you doing backups now? My wedding workflow, a sticky in this forum, details mine.

[tnis0612]

Yeah I thought about the offsite hard drive. I just don't really have a good spot to leave it that I can get to easily anytime on a regular basis.

I actually have 25/25 internet, and although i'm sure I may not be able to upload at 25mbps I figured 10mbps should be reasonable. And my math at that rate it would take 2.77 hours to do 100gb. So my thought was start the upload as soon as I get home from the wedding and it should easily be done by morning. My math can be fuzzy at times though so maybe I missed a zero somewhere.

Right now I don't do offsite backup, which is why i'm looking for this before my next wedding. Usually I keep the files on my desktop, my laptop, and leave them on the cards (I have plenty) until I've delivered the files. I keep the cards somewhat hidden (out of the camera) just in case I get robbed i'll be less likely to lose them.

[tim]

First up, 25Mbps is probably possible, but not to one server. Latency and TCP means you probably can't get massive upload speeds to one server, but you're much better off in the USA than here in NZ, we have very high latency. Let's say 5Mbps, you can see what you really get.

Your maths is incorrect. Please note B = byte, b = bit, 1 byte is 8 bits but I use 9 in the maths to account for TCP overheads. 100GB = 100,000MB. 2Mbps = 0.22MBps. 100,000 / 0.22 = 450000 seconds. Divide that by 3600 (seconds in an hour) and that by 24 (hours in a day) and you get 5.2 days. If you can get 10Mbps that's 2.6 days.

Glacier is really meant to long term backups, not short term. Plus did you account for upload bandwidth charges from Amazon? Also some ISPs limit you to 500GB per month, which should be ok, but if you already use 300GB and add another 300GB you're pushing your limits.

I keep my first offsite hard drive at a friends place, and my second at another friends. I used to keep it in a drawer at work. It doesn't matter how secure it is, because the chances of losing your primary and backup at the same time are low. Also where are your archives? I keep every shot I deliver to a customer, on site in raw and jpeg, offsite in dng and jpeg. I don't have to, but I want to.

[tnis0612]

Thanks for the info! The bit vs. byte issue, gotcha. So it sounds like it would be 9 times longer than my math..hmm...that's quite a while.

Yeah it sounds the hard drive solution is the way to go, I may give glacier a try for one upload just to see what kind of speed i'm getting.

Right now I don't backup archives. I keep them all, but not backed up. Smugmug keeps all of my full res jpegs and I don't know that I really feel the need to backup RAWs after i've delivered to the clients. I can always easily download the Jpegs if needed.

[tim]

Let us know how you get on, I'll be interested to hear how it works. In 5-10 years it may be practical for home users, for now I think it's aimed at corporations.

[richardyoung]

I think it is a great idea.. I am working on writing some code so I can upload data. I have done some math and can be expensive on a large large.. but for some high profile shoots.. I think it is a great service..

Currently my average shoot is running around 170gigs in size ( ave of last 5 shoots) and my content does takes days and days to upload.. Im pretty much upload non-stop all the time, but it is so important to backup off site..

[tim]

I still think hard drives are more practical.

People who do online backups should probably consider doing a super fast cull first, which would probably reduce the size by 50% or more. Then with what's left consider uploading jpeg versions, but that assumes you have an offsite backup of the raws already.

[sgtbueno]

I use S3 to backup all my customers website and just so you guys know it is so slow, really slow, but the price is great and I have all website to backup every week to amazon automatically, I don't have to touch anything and peace of mind is everything in life.

[mikeinctown]

Originally Posted by tim

I still think hard drives are more practical.

People who do online backups should probably consider doing a super fast cull first, which would probably reduce the size by 50% or more. Then with what's left consider uploading jpeg versions, but that assumes you have an offsite backup of the raws already.

QFT, the price of drives are coming way down right now. I saw an ad a couple days back. 2TB for $99. Get two and back up to both so as to be sure one crash doesn't delete everything.

[JohnThomas]

Originally Posted by tim

I keep my first offsite hard drive at a friends place, and my second at another friends. I used to keep it in a drawer at work. It doesn't matter how secure it is, because the chances of losing your primary and backup at the same time are low. Also where are your archives? I keep every shot I deliver to a customer, on site in raw and jpeg, offsite in dng and jpeg. I don't have to, but I want to.

Just out of curiosity Tim, do you have a dedicated office for your business?

[richardyoung]

That is what I do.. but it is such a hassle..I have a black ice extra hard drive dock and it just swap hdd in and out.. and I honestly thought it was a good idea( this last year I am slowly changing my workflow).. and as a first line of back up it is not too bad, but a friend of mine just had a ton of his hdd stolen and now he is super stressed that his images are going to be released all over the internet and everyplace else.

As of right now..
I shoot.. edit ( convert to jpg).. Capture Video.. Edit video.. make one huge folder.

burn that so some blu-rays, copy it to and hdd.. and then wait for it to be que in a backup program.. ( so there are 2 hard drives that have it.. one internal - one external).

however.. I am thinking about

burning to blu-ray.. uploading to amazon.. that is it..

amazon is good at keeping data, much better than hard drives are. I have a pile of like 8 or 9 hard drives that are dead..



--- currently what I have mounted---

[tim]

Originally Posted by JohnThomas

Just out of curiosity Tim, do you have a dedicated office for your business?

Yes, I do, attached to my house with a separate entrance for customers.

[siddr20]

Upload speeds in Australia are just damn slow (well for adls2 anyways).
Yeah a lot of people get confused with bytes/bits etc..

I have actually uploaded 11gbs worth of files to an American server once and it took me like 2 days!! Yup 2 days.

I keep my first offsite hard drive at a friends place, and my second at another friends. I used to keep it in a drawer at work. It doesn't matter how secure it is, because the chances of losing your primary and backup at the same time are low. Also where are your archives? I keep every shot I deliver to a customer, on site in raw and jpeg, offsite in dng and jpeg. I don't have to, but I want to.

+1 to that. Do the exact same thing.

I just have two external hard-drives I keep in circulation.

[richardyoung]

I'm currently uploading a copy of my releases and id from 1990 to 2000 and 2000 to 2010.. ( about 2 gigs and 8 gigs).. as a test.. but so far really happy.. - .10cent a month.. = 1.20 a year..

This so far is really cool..