Online Storage Option

Discuss which third party applications you use to help create your slide shows using ProShow Producer. This is not a forum to promote other slide show software programs.
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Online Storage Option

Postby AMD » Sat Mar 02, 2013 10:15 am

Hello Everyone,

I am hoping that you guys can give me some insight into a good online storage site. I am getting rather panicky regarding some of my files--especially, since last evening I thought I had fried my large (1.8 TB) external drive where I have my Proshow resources and collected files stored.

Is there a particular one that some of you use that you really recommend? I would like to have something that is rather simplistic--that easily stores and gives me quick access to files should I need them.

Thanks,
Ann

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Re: Online Storage Option

Postby briancbb » Sat Mar 02, 2013 1:11 pm

Depending on your internet connection it could take an age to upload your 'backup' to the cloud.

I backup to a 2TB USB3 harddrive, which cost me £70 (about $110 US), probably cheaper than that in the USA!

To get over the house fire problem, this backup drive is kept at a relative who lives nearby (I also keep his BU here). I guess if I had a house fire and lost everything a BU of my files may be the least of my worries, but you never know.

Being close by I can get at my files within 5 Mins at most times, probably faster than downloading from the cloud and probably overall more cost effective.
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Re: Online Storage Option

Postby Merlin_AZ » Sat Mar 02, 2013 9:16 pm

http://www.techhive.com/article/259729/ ... ackup.html
Crashplan.com $4/month unlimited was rated favorably.
The first upload could take forever, depending on your upload speeds.

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Re: Online Storage Option

Postby AMD » Sun Mar 03, 2013 3:43 pm

Brian and Merlin,

Thanks for replying. Yes, Brian, my resources and collected files are backed up on a 2 TB external drive but I thought I had "fried" it a couple of nights ago. Actually, I signed up for a service yesterday but, after I paid my money, I clicked on the next screen to download their app and ran into a page with about 7 or 8 upgrade purchases to do what I thought I had paid almost $150 to do for a two-year contract. Now, unfortunately, I am trying to get in touch with their customer service to cancel it . . . what an aggravation! I may find it best for peace of mind just to back up my backup to yet another hard drive and put it in the bank box!

Thanks,
Ann

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Re: Online Storage Option

Postby BarbaraC » Mon Mar 04, 2013 4:23 pm

Ann, only if you feel comfortable doing so, would you tell us which service it is you're now trying to get away from?

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Re: Online Storage Option

Postby Oldguy » Tue Mar 05, 2013 5:34 am

Carbonite, is a really painless way to have
a good backup!!!

Forrest

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Re: Online Storage Option

Postby AMD » Thu Mar 07, 2013 9:51 am

Barbara,

I don't think there is anything unethical about my saying that it is MyPCBackup that I was frustrated by the online page of upgrades after a purchased a subscription. They actually did nothing wrong . . . I was just "put off" by subscribing and then being confronted with a page of things for upgrade before I had even downloaded their app. However, to their credit, I must say that they immediately refunded my full initial subscription fee through PayPal with no hassle at all once I called them and have offered me a two-month free subscription. Of course, one can see why they offer the freebie; once one gets one's computer backed up, I am sure it is very difficult to decide to lose the backups and all that time taken. I am trying them out, though, and have been backing up for two days now and am not even at 10% for My Documents. It will cost me an additional amount, though, to back up any external drive with a capacity over 16 GB (My external that I am backing my resources up to now has a 2TB capacity)!!

Needless to say, I am still floundering a bit and am still not sure what I will eventually do. Of course, it seems expensive for all the backups--until something happens. If everything crashed today, though, a couple of hundred dollars would be a bargain to get it back. So, what is one to do for peace of mind? We never appreciate any type of insurance, I guess, until something happens that we have to collect. I decided to go ahead and try the backup of My Documents on my unit and make a decision from there.

Ann

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Re: Online Storage Option

Postby BarbaraC » Thu Mar 07, 2013 10:16 am

Ann, I haven't heard about the company, though that doesn't mean anything at all since, when I was considering a backup service, I looked only at Carbonite, Mozy, and another one I can no longer remember the name of. Mozy had a free version, and I was thinking of trying it, but then I realized I'm fairly good about backing up files on both disk and external drive, so I figured the heck with it.

One location I stopped storing anything at all in was My Documents due to a nasty experience with Windows quite a long time ago. Windows got itself in a tangle and made a wreck of My Documents. I swore never again, and I've stuck to it.

One thing you might consider, if you don't have one, is to get a second hard drive (or are you using a laptop?) so that Windows and all software are on the C: drive and all your files are on the other drive. When I got a new computer, it was so much easier to just stick the second hard drive in there and have all my files instantly available.

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Re: Online Storage Option

Postby slideshowsandmore » Sun Mar 17, 2013 8:22 pm

I've been using Carbonite, Home Premier package. It's $149 per year but it keeps a mirror image of my drive, and backs up all my video files automatically. I keep most of my stuff on external drives, to keep my pc running smoothly, and this is all protected by the plan. I've lost too many hard drives to chance having to retrieve/locate everything I need.

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Re: Online Storage Option

Postby Amazing.Edna » Mon Mar 18, 2013 6:48 pm

Another way of backup - we use a lot of these!

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http://www.quill.com/catalog/browse/sku ... ODUCT_FEED

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Re: Online Storage Option

Postby gsmcl0964 » Tue Mar 19, 2013 7:31 am

Ann,

You may already have a solution for your backup needs. If you don't or for others who might be looking for a solution, I will share with you what works for me. I am moderately technical and have made my backup choices on the premise that all media has 1 thing in common: one day, it will fail. Therefore I have backed up my stuff (mostly photos - I have almost 50K) three different ways:

1) My solution of synchronizing my data to local media is: Goodsync, from a company called Cyber Systems. This software allows you to synchronize files, folders and directories to any type of media: drives, memory cards, servers, and various cloud providers. I think one does need to be at least somewhat technical to use it, but once you set it up, it just works. Goodsync.com for more info.

If you decide to buy Goodsync, I recommend getting it via Trial Pay. Through Trial Pay, you can sign up for or buy something different, and get Goodsync for "free". For example, instead of paying the normal $30ish for Goodsync, I signed up for trial pay, and purchased a $5 service on Fiver.com and got "Goodsync" for signing up and buying something for $5 on Fiver.com. If you are interested in buying this way, start here: http://www.goodsync.com/trialpay_dl_bn.html

Using Goodsync, I am able to keep copies of my data on 2 external drives (one of which is usually off site), 2 different PCs and 1 server. Um, yeah, I have a few (too many) devices. :oops:

Note: I get nothing for this recommendation.

2) My solution of synchronizing my data to "the cloud"is: Backblaze.com. Most folks, have not yet heard of these guys. I chose them versus other providers, like Carbonite (which I have heard is good), because I wanted to get something that was very inexpensive and very easy to use, for unlimited data (between photos, videos, and music, I have about 1TB of stuff I want to back up). The normal price for Backblaze is $3.96 per month, if you subscribe for 2-years. I think it is $5/month, if you don't want to commit.

They have software that installs on my PC which passively uploads pretty much everything: operating system, apps, and data. To configure the software, I did two things:

1) I told it not to back up my back up drive :)
2) I encrypted my data with a password

This took about a minute and the only time I touch the software is when I want to do online video chat: I pause my backup so all of the 0.7mb/s upload bandwidth that I have with my DSL provider can be used for the video.

If you are like me and you have slow upload and lots of data, it will take a LONG time to back-up all your data. For example, for my approximately 1TB, I started backing up on Black Friday 2012. BackBlaze software estimates that 46 days from today, it will be finished.

For me this is fine for a few reasons. Once the initial data is backed up, I am not adding new stuff faster than what I can upload, which I think is around 7 or 8GB per day. Also, I'll soon be able to upgrade my upload bandwidth to 3.0mb/s.

The other thing to know about BackBlaze, if you have LOTS of data like me, if you ever need to recover that data, you'll probably do it by paying them additional money to have them send you your data on a drive. For me this works because it should be extremely unlikely that I ever need to recover from the cloud. However, as a deep safety, for the cost, relative to the value (to me) of my data (esp my photos), it is a no-brainer to have this service.

If you are interested in getting this service you can do it, one of two ways:
1) Just go to their web site; or
2) If find what I have written as helpful, you can buy it (same price) through my affiliate link:
http://www.backblaze.com/partner/af4803

Note: I would get some a commission payment if you use my link. Forum MODs, if you don't want my affiliate link here, you are welcome to delete it. My apologies if I broke a rule; it is not my intention to do so. Also, I have not yet had to attempt a recovery from BackBlaze, so I cannot vouch for how well that works (or doesn't work).


3) My solution for recovering my OS and applications, as well as historical data is: Acronis True Image Home, 2011. Both of the back-up methods above are synchronizations that protect data against media failure. However, what happens if:

a) my OS gets corrupt (I use Windows 7, so it happens), or
b) if I save over a file and a few weeks later I want to recover that previous version?

I use Acronis True Image Home to solve both of these issues, for me. I regularly back up my OS and applications (which I keep on a separate partition of my hard drive), and I use "Acronis Non-stop backup" to keep a history of previous version. Acronis manages the history so that I don't have to think about it, similar to what Apple users get from Time Machine, from my understanding.

The one thing that I really don't like about Acronis is that every year the company releases a new version of their software and asks for upgrade money. From reviews that I have read, these upgrades often add very little in the way of new features that would be of value to me. Anyway, I have seen Newegg occasionally offer this software for as low as $19.99, but I think the regular price (you can usually find a coupon code) is either $39 or $49.

Note: I get nothing for this recommendation.



I hope that this helps you and others who read this. Finally, there are probably other good solutions out there that I am not familiar with. I am in no way trying to disparage them. I am sharing what I do, why I do it, and if applicable what I like or don't like about my back up choices.

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Re: Online Storage Option

Postby AMD » Mon Mar 25, 2013 8:37 pm

Thanks Everyone,

I appreciate the advice and suggestions. MyPCBackup did offer me a two-month free trial. (Of course, after I spent days just backing up my Desktop and My Documents, they realize I will think twice about abandoning them!) I probably will go with MyPCBackup. It seems to be rather straight forward. The biggest problem is that they seem to charge for upgrades for several services--such as automatic backups of videos and a pretty hefty upgrade price for an external drive over 16GB; since I really want to back up a couple of quite large external drive, that is going to add significantly to costs.

I have my Proshow resources backed up on a 2T external drive and have some other things backed up to a couple of other large external drives. However, I almost panicked the other day when I thought I had fried my major external drive.

As I have said previously, though, it seems expensive but--like any other insurance--if something major happened and I had everything backed up and didn't lose it, it would seem inexpensive!!

Again, thanks for your responses.

Ann

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Re: Online Storage Option

Postby HunnyB » Tue Mar 26, 2013 7:21 am

I just had my external drive to crash also..... but thankfully my computer guy was able to save my SHOWS and pictures and transfer them to my OTHER external drive...... I think I am fixing to save my shows on about 3 external drives and just hope for the best !!!!! :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
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