Today’s Question: I’ve procrastinated for years on getting some kind of off-site backup storage, and now recent events have motivated me. What’s your recommendations for cloud storage services? I’m probably looking for at least 7TB of storage.
Tim’s Quick Answer: I recommend Backblaze as an excellent cloud-based backup solution. Specifically, I recommend the “Personal” version of their Computer Backup product, which provides unlimited online backup for around $100 per year.
More Detail: A cloud-based backup solution provides an easy way to have an “extra” copy of your photos and other important data at an offsite location. I recommend this in addition to maintaining at least one (but ideally two or more) backup copies locally.
I have been using Backblaze for years and have assisted many photographers in getting this cloud-based backup service in place as well as assisting them in recovering photos after a drive failure or other issue resulting in lost data. Files can be recovered individually or in bulk, with various options for recovery such as downloading from the website or having a hard drive shipped to you.
I recommend the Computer Backup Personal product, which sells for around $99 per year (though prices will vary by region and currency). I also highly recommend upgrading to their one-year Version History option, which means you only need to connect hard drives to your computer once per year to maintain all online backups for each drive.
This backup service provides unlimited data, so while it may take some time to upload all your existing data to the Backblaze servers, there’s no limit to how many hard drives you can back up with a Backblaze subscription. You only need an individual subscription per computer, but otherwise the backup service supports unlimited data.
You can learn more about the Computer Backup Personal product from Backblaze on their website here:
https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup/personal
