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How to back up your photos and video on location the easy way with a smartphone and an SSD

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I’ve been through various iterations of location backup workflows over the years. When I started out with DSLRs back in 2002 I was using the Super DigiBin, which allowed me to pull files off my huge 128MB CompactFlash cards and back them up onto a (for the time) ridiculously huge 20GB hard drive.

Things have come a long way in the last couple of decades since I relied on that Super DigiBin. These days, I back up my memory cards to SSDs quickly and easily on location using my smartphone. OWC recently sent over their Envoy Pro Elektron SSD and 5-port USB hub for us to try, so I thought this would be a good time to show you my current location backup workflow and offer up some of my thoughts on the OWC gear.

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PSA: Google’s free cloud photo storage ends in 2 weeks – Here are eight alternatives

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Last November, Google announced that its free unlimited photo backup was going to end and it would all fall under the free shared 15GB get you with Google’s other services, like Gmail and Google Drive. Now, it’s almost upon us, with the service set to shut down on June 1st. You can, of course, upgrade to Google One (although there’s no “Unlimited” package), but what are your alternatives?

Well, none of the alternatives are really free, either. Not for unlimited storage, anyway. But with Google shifting over to a paid-only option with minimal free storage, the advantage they once had is now gone. Here we take a look at a few of the competing services for you to check out and see which best fits your needs.

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PSA: Amazon Photos auto-save might not be auto-saving all of your raw files

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The whole cloud backup thing has been a hot topic for a while now as various services have been simultaneously killing off unlimited storage while others have been bringing it back and trying to outdo each other to win over your business. Amazon Photos is one such service that offers unlimited space as long as you have a prime account – including your raw photos. But it seems it’s not backing up everything – even if you think that it is.

Reddit user /u/somebodytoshove posted to /r/photography noting that the auto-save feature of the Amazon Photos iOS app has not been uploading the .raf files from his Fuji mirrorless camera. It thinks it has, and it looks like it has, but when you look at the uploaded files, they actually contain only the jpg preview.

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Fujifilm breaks backup storage records with a tape that can hold 580 Terabytes

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Fujifilm has shattered backup storage records with a new magnetic tape backup solution that offers around 50x the capacity of current commercially available LTO-8 tapes – which hold around 12TB of uncompressed data. Fuji’s new format stands at a whopping 580TB of data storage, thanks to the development of a new magnetic particle called Strontium Ferrite (SrFe).

The new system was developed in conjunction with IBM Research and provides a single tape with enough space to store the equivalent of 120,000 DVDs. They say that the newly developed magnetic material allows for finer particles and denser storage while still offering a high level of performance.

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5 alternatives to Google Photos cloud storage for backing up your work

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Google Photos has been one of the best photo hosting cloud services out there, offering storage for an unlimited number of your photos absolutely free – as long as you didn’t mind a slight hit in image quality. But that is coming to an end and Google is abandoning its free tier. You still get your free 15GB (shared across all Google services, like Gmail, etc), but if you want any more than that, you’ll have to pay now.

It was a sweet ride while it lasted, and there aren’t really any great free alternatives out there now. But now that you do have to pay, what are the other top paid alternatives out there? Let’s take a look at five of them.

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Google is killing unlimited storage for non enterprise users – don’t move away from G Suite

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If you have been using the unlimited storage feature of G Suite to back up your photos and videos, wait before moving into Google Workplace. Google Workspace only has unlimited storage on enterprise plans.

Google made some big noise about replacing the G Suite with an even better Google Workspace. Among the many changes that may or may not be incredible for you, one change is clearly not in favor of high storage users.

If you or your team were using G Suite Business, you would get unlimited storage for $12/user. If I recall correctly, you needed at least four users to enroll in that level of service.  Now Google Workspace will only give you 2 TB of storage for your $12, 5TB for $18, and according to Android Police, you can move to an Enterprise account for $20 ($30 for enterprise+) and get the same unlimited storage. However, it will be at least 50% significantly more expensive.

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How I store and backup my photography

 

Storing and backing up efficiently and securely more than ten years of photography is a complicate technical task.

At the center of my setup I use a Synology DS1515+ NAS, with 8 disks configured in Raid 6 for a total of 14.54TB of available storage.

I wrote about this set up a year ago, but I recently updated it to be more streamlined and secure.

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Deal alert: Western Digital Elements 10TB desktop drives are only $159 until the end of today

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Update: If you’ve missed this deal at B&H, then Amazon currently has the 10TB Western Digital Elements for $159.99.

B&H currently has the Western Digital 10TB My Book Desktop USB 3.0 external hard drive on massive discount until the end of today. With $100 off, they’ve been reduced from $279.99 to $179.99. That’s only $10 over the regular price of an 8TB drive.

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Backblaze report shows larger hard drives are more reliable than small ones

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Hard drives are something that all of us have. Some of us just have the one our computer came with, while others will have a whole mountain of them. I’m in the latter camp, although I do try to keep things to a minimum. Every few years I replace all my storage drives as faster, cheaper, larger capacity drives are released.

So, every few years I’m in the market for new drives. So, I look at large consumers of hard drives. Consumers like Backblaze, who just released their Q3 2018 report, showing their hard drive failure rates and they’re quite surprising. At least, they surprised me. It seems that those huge 8TB, 10TB and 12TB drives are actually far more reliable than smaller drives.

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