A few months ago I polled my photographer friends regarding the best online storage solution for photographers. Most recommended Mozy, and said they were using its unlimited backup plan. I signed up, paying for a two-year plan, thereby getting a lower yearly rate. Mozy’s backup app calculated that it would take months to backup my stuff.
Two months into my subscription I happened to see an announcement on Mozy’s home page telling me that the unlimited subscription plan is no longer available, and that my plan would be “automatically renewed to one which supports your current usage needs.”
Mozy hyped their “unlimited” plan heavily right up til the price change, signing up their existing customer base. I can choose not to renew at the end of my plan term, but what I’ve paid for is useless to me. It makes no sense for me to continue uploading all those files, only to need to begin the process elsewhere in a year with someone else.
Rob Haggart’s discussion of online storage options with calculations of cost per month at APhotoEditor is worth a read. So are the comments, where a few readers note that their data creation rate is higher than their possible file transmission rate, thus their backlog continually increases.
I’ve thought about switching to another provider, but scrutiny of their terms leaves me wary. BackBlaze’s disclaimer of warranty appears to claim that BackBlaze and its vendors are all likely to be incompetent boobs with no idea how to run a storage center. The other backup sites may have similar terms.
Despite (or because of) the other advances in digital technology, storage is becoming a bigger problem as time goes on. I’ve decided on a simpler approach. My dad’s going to get a portable 1-Terrabyte drive of backup files from me in the mail every few months. At 3 x 5 x 3/8 inches each, by the time mom complains about the space they take up, I’m sure much more compact drives will be available. Or there’s always the in-laws.
You can send the drives to me…
I don’t mean to “spam” anything, but have you considered LiveDrive at all? I resell for them, and we have a few photographers with us who are quite pleased. LiveDrive proper is quite expensive, and they make you pay per computer now, but a lot of the resellers (like me) are quite cheap and do not have the one computer cap. (Running risk of being spammy, boundlesscloud.com.)
Oh .. .and yes, I was a Mozy customer too … my price change went from $100/year to $250/year … ridiculous.
I just need to backup my database and a few files. But I see your problem as that is how most companies treat small fish. But for http://scrabblecheat.com I just need a reliable service. I’ve seen so many people ruined by incompetent businesses wiping their drives and saying oops.
I wonder if it isn’t easier to buy an external zip or iomega or whatever is out there now and backup your own system.
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