Year Away Travelling, Online Backup

flugel

Hi there, hope I'm posting in the correct forum.

Basically I'm going travelling for a year. On my trip I want to backup my photos online. I'm just wondering if someone could point me in the right direction?

Away for a full year so there'll be plenty of photos, I understand some sites let you purchase more storage space. If needs be I'd be I'd do that (or would I need the extra space considering the websites decrease the photo file size?).

But more so I'm looking for a site to let me upload a bunch of photo's at one go and preferably when I return home, let me download the photo's to my own hard disk, do any of the sites have this feature?

Anybody else ever been in similar situation to me and if so what did you do?

Any help greatly appreciated.


Apologies if in wrong forum!

dazftw

www.flickr.com sign up for a pro account (around €20 for a year). You will have unlimitied space for a year. Then when you come home use a program to just download all your photos on flickr to your computer.

pete4130

I'm off o the other side of the world in about 2 weeks for anywhere between 1-4 years with no idea where I'll end up. I've been away from home for nearly 18 months now. My usual routine is external portable HDD as backup and onto DVD.
When I'm further away I plan on shipping DVD's home and once they arrive, backing up the HDD onto another drive and shipping the older drive home. Once the HDD gets home safe reformat the new HDD and start fresh.

Sometimes through work I can shoot 40GB+ per month so online storage isn't really viable if travelling.

Edit: I'd be shooting raw files so that's the reason why I need HDD backup. If it's just jpg files the flickr is fine.

flugel

Sounds that Flickr will be the place to start so!

Well l won't be taking 40GB's of photos a month myself, but good idea with the dvd's and posting them home if needs be, once ya know they've arrrived safely that would be a relief.

Last thing I'd want to lose on the trip would be the photo's, well maybe just after my passport!


Cheers for the advice guys, one less thing to figure out!

T-rev

zumo drive backup thingy, its on my yahoo mail account and it can update your files automatically when connected to the net. thats what i plan to use anyway

TinyExplosions

It depends on what sort of files you want to save -if you're taking jpgs then Flickr is probably your best bet, though if you'll be taking RAW files, I'd use something different, like dropbox, box.net or jungle disk, but it also depends on if you have a laptop with you or not and how techy you are.

If you have a laptop, the cheapest way would be to get some webspace from a hosting company (asmallorange, blacknight etc), and ftp your files up as and when you need to, or install dropbox on your laptop and put your files in there so they are automatically backed up when you connect.

It all really depends on what gear you have with you and what you'll be shooting!

cazze

For Jpg Flickr is fine
but bear in mind there is a loss in resolution when you download from flickr

I found out last year when i was getting a shot printed for an exhibition that i was taking part in..

leche solara

adrive.com offer 50GB of free storage on their basic package.

oshead

pete4130 wrote: »

I'm off o the other dude of the world in about 2 weeks for anywhere between 1-4 years with no idea where I'll end up. I've been away from home for nearly 18 months now. My usual routine is external portable HDD as backup and onto DVD.
When I'm further away I plan on shipping DVD's home and once they arrive, backing up the HDD onto another drive and shipping the older drive home. Once the HDD gets home safe reformat the new HDD and start fresh.

That's a good solution Pete. Sounds like you've got the worst case of itchy feet I've heard of in a long time. Are you keeping an online travel log?

waldo

Dropbox, Flickr etc are great ideas in principle, but foreign interent cafes might be slower than you think (especially up uplink connections). You may have to spend hours waiting for files to upload.

Another option is to backup to DVD and post home. When the DVDs arrive home safe and the files are confirmed, then delete from your memory cards and repeat (you will need a few memory cards for this). Not ideal, but might be more practical. You will also avoid the trouble of downloading all the photos again afterwards.

Enjoy the trip!

Edit: Didn't see Pete's post, but you get the idea.

dave66

Go with pix.ie, support Irish Industry/Businesses!

Great interface, easy to use, I much prefer it to flickr

DotOrg

i'm heading off for a year of traveling and shooting but am relying on a laptop and two external hard drives. i'll probably mail home DVD's of select photos throughout the year too

DotOrg

i wasn't even thinking about online backup due to really slow upload speeds in so many countries

magicbastarder

dazftw wrote: »

Then when you come home use a program to just download all your photos on flickr to your computer.

any idea of what programs would be best to use?

pete4130

oshead wrote: »

That's a good solution Pete. Sounds like you've got the worst case of itchy feet I've heard of in a long time. Are you keeping an online travel log?

I did set up a blog, but not put anything on it yet. No point while still here in London. There isn't much going on here other than working and living. When I set off in 2 weeks to Bali I'll have some stuff up on it before I go and share the link. I'll just have to pull my finger out and get it started. I can't wait for Bali. I've looked online for other peoples photos and they all seem really generic, bad HDR sunsets/beach shots or monkey shots. I guess they are peoples holiday snaps though. I'm planning on getting properly lost and trying to see it from a totally different perspective.

jonnybravo

I'm away for a year at the moment and use Snapfish. Would agree with the others that it would take too long to upload online as your only source of backup. I have a netbook which is handy for backing up photos and when I get free wireless in a hostel I just let the photos upload overnight.

oshead

pete4130 wrote: »

I did set up a blog, but not put anything on it yet. No point while still here in London. There isn't much going on here other than working and living. When I set off in 2 weeks to Bali I'll have some stuff up on it before I go and share the link. I'll just have to pull my finger out and get it started. I can't wait for Bali. I've looked online for other peoples photos and they all seem really generic, bad HDR sunsets/beach shots or monkey shots. I guess they are peoples holiday snaps though. I'm planning on getting properly lost and trying to see it from a totally different perspective.

I was in Bali for a few days, enroute (via Australia) to the Japanese World Cup. It's a small enough island but the interior is big enough to get off the beaten track. It's a buddist island in a nation of muslems so the culture is quite unique in the region. There are some excellent looking rice fields built into the side of the mountains/volcanoes and loads of local hand crafts, wood carving, weaving and the like to keep you amused.

A couple of good sites for setting up a log if you havn't already found them, travelpod.com and travelblog.org.

hopelessOne

We were travelling around Australia/NZ in 2003 and almost every Internet cafe would burn our photos onto a cd (DVD's now, I guess). We'd then mail them back home along with any souvenirs we didn't want to carry. Depending where you're going, internet cafes & postal services will be more prevalent than high speed Internet.

If you want an online service, I like Smugmug for lots of reasons including: they store your original images, as uploaded, not recompressed; they offer a SmugVault service (extra) where you can upload RAW files and other non-image files; you can structure your site in terms of categories/sub-categories/albums.

jaybeeveedub

amazon offer reasonable cloud storage

Ricky91t

The only issue about online backup is upload speeds.


I've 1mbps upload ( considered fairly good in Ireland ) and an 80mb youtube video takes about 10 minutes to upload, That's about 10 full resolution photos, If you take 30-40 on an average day it could easily take an hour a night uploading and that's only if the connection is cable/Good ADSL.Usually ADSL ( phoneline broadband ) might only offer half of one third of that.

It's something to consider.

Four of a kind

pete4130 wrote: »

I did set up a blog, but not put anything on it yet. No point while still here in London. There isn't much going on here other than working and living. When I set off in 2 weeks to Bali I'll have some stuff up on it before I go and share the link. I'll just have to pull my finger out and get it started. I can't wait for Bali. I've looked online for other peoples photos and they all seem really generic, bad HDR sunsets/beach shots or monkey shots. I guess they are peoples holiday snaps though. I'm planning on getting properly lost and trying to see it from a totally different perspective.

Will be very interested to read your blog on Bali. Am heading to Asia for 6 months in june and Bali and the Gili islands are a must see stop for me.

Would love to get some insight info on it from your blog!