Tag Archives: storage

by Michelle Lentz

I need your suggestions.

I keep a lot of my older data on two external drives: a Seagate 250 GB hard drive holds all my photos from 2002 forward, music, video, and other personal files. A 1 TB Western Digital holds all my business-related items.

Some of this stuff is scattered between my two laptops as well, but mostly not due to space considerations.

This has always worked well for me – until yesterday.

I plugged in my Seagate to grab my holiday playlists only to discover that there is no data on my Seagate. It’s telling me I need to reformat my drive – that it’s a blank disc. What? I’ve tried it on several different computers at this point, both PC and Mac. I’ve accepted that my data is somehow, magically gone.

Now, my music is backed up on my iPod and my photos since 2005 are on Flickr. But everything else? Not so much. This has convinced me, more than anything else, the benefits of also having an off-site backup. You know, in the Cloud.

I know there are a bunch of companies out there, such as Drop.io. I have around 200 GB of data, and that will only increase. What do you recommend for price, capacity, and ease of use? Leave your thoughts in the comments. I hope to have found something by next week, and believe me, I’ll take your suggestions to heart.

Thanks, and happy Thanksgiving!

Photo Credits:
- Lost Data
– King Cloud

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Contact Michelle with your news, apps, and events via email at michelle[at]writetech.net, Twitter, Pownce, or FriendFeed. Visit Michelle at Wine-Girl.net and Write Technology.

by Michelle Lentz

I occasionally worry that backing up my world – particularly the world of my business – onto a 2-1TB drives is not smart. Sure it removes the files from the local machines, but if there is a fire or some other catastrophe, I doubt I’ll remember to grab my external hard drives as I run for safety. So I sometimes ponder whether or not to invest in some sort of off-site storage. I use, on a limited basis, GSpace. GSpace is a Firefox plug-in that turns your Gmail accounts into off-site storage. This works for current client files, but certainly not for everything I routinely back up.

Enter SmugMug. Yesterday they announced that they are offering SmugVault. Using Amazon’s network of datacenters, you can now store more than just your photos at SmugMug. You can store all of your files. They suggest you do this because of what? Natural disaster. They’re preying on my own worries, so they must also be the worries of others.

To the best of my knowledge, SmugVault requires a SmugMug account. With your SmugMug account (one of three different pricing tiers), storage of image files is included. You can store other files, such as DOCs, PDFs, and more. Amazon will bill you for storing those file types.

- Storage costs 22 cents per gigabyte per month.  2GB = 44 cents/month
- There is a $1/month recurring charge.
- Data transfer in is 30 cents per gigabyte. Data transfer out is 51 cents per gigabyte.

For many folks, this gives the opportunity to back up RAW image files or the full video, pre-edited, without the web resolution. This is just pure data.

So, is the price right? Would you use a service like this? Let us know!

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Events, news, apps, and more – let me know at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, via Twitter, or via Pownce.