Online storage speed

stphnstevey

If you use online storage to back up your documents etc, if you need to access them, do you have to download them again and how fast is it?

I have about 1 TB of home pictures and movies from holiday etc. Is it practical to use online backup for this?

debitcardmayhem

stphnstevey wrote: »

If you use online storage to back up your documents etc, if you need to access them, do you have to download them again and how fast is it?

I have about 1 TB of home pictures and movies from holiday etc. Is it practical to use online backup for this?

Nope, what is your line speed, what is the download limit / month
if your upload speed is circa 384 kbps do the maths, then work out how often you want to look at them at 6Mbps
1TB = 384k * 3 * 1,000,000 * 8 ...approx (if it makes you feel better ignore the headers for each 1500 B if that is your IP is capable of) divide by 86400(secs*mins*hours) you will get the drift.

mbrownish

Not practical and certainly not cost-effective. The only online storage I know of that goes up to a terabyte is Amazon Cloud, and that will cost you $1000 (£600ish) per year. By contrast you can get an external terabyte hard drive for about £50, 2 terabyte under £100 if you shop around. That's without even getting into the speed issues - I reckon it could easily take a month to upload a terabyte.

Pinkypants

http://www.livedrive.com/features/packages

The speed as said, will be what ever broadband speed and file size you download or upload.

I've used this many a time and took me a while to get 1st back up done. I just left me computer on overnight uploading for best part of 2 weeks. Can't remember how much data it was though.

Jeff_Bridges_hair

mbrownish wrote: »

Not practical and certainly not cost-effective. The only online storage I know of that goes up to a terabyte is Amazon Cloud, and that will cost you $1000 (£600ish) per year. By contrast you can get an external terabyte hard drive for about £50, 2 terabyte under £100 if you shop around. That's without even getting into the speed issues - I reckon it could easily take a month to upload a terabyte.

No need to pay that much christ.. Open 2 accounts here http://www.strato-hosting.co.uk/online-storage-hidrive/index.html and after the initial 6 months are over its only £19 per month after that.. but as others have said it would take you an age to upload them all so get some back up hard drives..

Pinkypants

errr Livedrive is £3.95 a month,some what cheaper then £19.

debitcardmayhem

Please read the original post..... He is asking about the feasibilty not cost ......

mbrownish

Hm, Strato is an interesting option, costwise (though a hard drive you can keep would cost less in not many months). Livedrive claims to offer "unlimited" space, which makes my "too good to be true / too good to survive" detector tingle.

Yes, well back to speed: totally impractical for that amount of data, I'd say, on a normal broadband connection. Impractical to upload, impractical to download. I mean, copying 1tb will take near a day to do with an external drive!

stphnstevey

Ok, thanks for the info

So what is the expected practical uses of online backup?

robt_2

stphnstevey wrote: »

Ok, thanks for the info

So what is the expected practical uses of online backup?

Redundancy for one.

If you backup to an external drive and your house burns down then your backup burns too (assuming it was in the house).

Pinkypants

You don't need to take it with you. It's proberly one of the safest methods of backing up. You can access it on any internet connection.