Looking for a good, long-term online storage solution. Does such a thing exist?

Depends on your definition of long term.... I have still running computers older than some online backup providers.

Online backup is (IMHO) a useful tool for a second backup. It is not a replacement for an onsite hard drive copy or an offsite hard drive copy.

A few of the vendors support a seeded backup, but not all. Seeded backup is where they send you an encrypted hard drive, you make an initial backup to that then ship it back and they load it into your account. From there you backup to that initial seed. This means if you have 200GB of images to backup you dont have to wait weeks or months to upload that 200GB. This is really the only way to start backing up a large amount of data, but it costs some money.

Another thing to consider, if you go out and shoot 20GB worth of keepers, how long will it take you to backup? Depends on your internet connection. If you lose all your data, how long to restore? Again, some will ship you a hard drive... For $$$.

Myself, I have my NAS that stores all my images, DB, previews, and all other files on RAID6 arrays. Important stuff is regularly mirrored to hard drives that are stored off site. I dont yet bother with a serious online backup strategy, the cost is too great to backup all my important files and all my images. And I dont have the fastest internet so it would take forever to backup. I tried a few out and IMHO one of the better ones is Crashplan.

I have been using Imageevent.com for a few years now. More a picture viewing and sharing site though it provides password protected and hidden album options also. While it does not allow mass downloading (back from the web) I have over 600GB of pictures stored there - Believe it is $60 a year. They have backups and the only time I had a glitch where a folder was missing they had it back up in a few hours.

Look at Backblaze. They offer unlimited storage for around 5 bucks a month.

You know what, print the pictures. Honestly prints survive more than any electronic media. And it is something future gens or other family members can see and enjoy.

JakAHearts wrote in post #14768635
Look at Backblaze. They offer unlimited storage for around 5 bucks a month.

To me, that seems like an unsustainable business model... and that's never a good option for long term storage.

Nathan wrote in post #14772132
To me, that seems like an unsustainable business model... and that's never a good option for long term storage.

Not necessarily. For every person with a terabyte or more on the service, there's probably a hundred with less than 10GB.

Carbonite has been doing a good job for me. I was robbed a few years back, they got it all since my backups were to a NAS in the same building. So ya Carbonite for a few years now and twice I had to recover some pictures and it worked out quite well.

thedge wrote in post #14765858
Online backup is (IMHO) a useful tool for a second backup. It is not a replacement for an onsite hard drive copy or an offsite hard drive copy.

And some on-line backup companies have, in past years, gone bankrupt and suddenly ceased operations, without leaving client data with another company or even notifying clients with sufficient time for them to take any action at all!

mike_d wrote in post #14773747
Not necessarily. For every person with a terabyte or more on the service, there's probably a hundred with less than 10GB.

I still say unsustainable.

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Check it out! Still in development and this inst the full version, this is the free version at the moment, however it may still be of use to you, but keep a look out for the full version

Honestly one of the best options is working with a few friends to build yourselves a 2-3 server backup system. Assuming at least one in the group is good enough with IT to do the setup and be confident in their work.

You really need critical data hosted in multiple physical locations, and ideally in multiple data instances. That way if a file corrupts, or a house burns down, then you can still retrieve your data.

I'm also a big fan of non-networked dump-boxes. Systems configured with a super stripped down Unix like environment, and interfacing with the world by way of high speed external storage drives. Why? Because they are less open to attack.

I think if you want reliable you will need to do it yourself. No one cares about your data more than you. Get a redundant server AND a reliable backup plan. Don't confuse the two, they are both components of a backup plan. There are several threads on the subject of backup plans.

Nathan wrote in post #14778142
I still say unsustainable.

That's mainly an issue if you are using the cloud as your only backup. If it is part of a backup strategy, then the cloud company going out of business is an inconvenience, not a loss of data.

RTPVid wrote in post #14786163
That's mainly an issue if you are using the cloud as your only backup. If it is part of a backup strategy, then the cloud company going out of business is an inconvenience, not a loss of data.

And even if it were your only backup, the odds of them going out of business when actually need to restore your data is pretty slim.

Film Negatives will last a lot longer than any of my harddrives will..

But sadly I shoot almost all digital.

I at all times have my photos backup on two different externals. I try to update them everything month or so.. If something happens to one of them. You have one left to backup a new harddrive..

Sure you have SmugMug/Flickr/etc.. But you never know if those companies will be in business in five years..

Maybe look into printing some of your more memorable moments of your child/pet/family/lands​capes/etc and keep them in a photo album. Worst comes to worst.. You at least have a 4x6 of whatever 50 years from now..

You don't want to be that guy who has his computer crash and you only had your pics on that one computer... Not good.