Online storage to dump files

June 6, 2015 10:36 AM

I have a mass of errata and cruft, plus the usual family pictures, etc. I haven't taken the time to see how large the data set is. What's the easiest online/cloud host to dump all of this in one place ?

This was last asked 2014, a bit over a year ago.

I can imagine with pictures, I'd be over the 2gb of dropbox. Google/s 15gb limit looks doable (maybe).

I plan to cull what can easily be found/replaced/downloaded again, but there's plenty of other files that I'd rather not dig for (eg MAME ROMS).

Granted, a huge bulk of these files are rarely-if-ever used, but I'd just like to shuffle them off to some digital library in the cloud and forget about which CD or old hard drive or external drive they are on, and toss the local copies. THIS RULES OUT CRASHPLAN. (because I don't want a machine backed up, I want certain files backed up)

I'm not an apple user, and don't own a smartphone.

What are my best options ? I'm OK paying for it, but I don't want something like that backs up my machine, I want something where I can pick/upload specific files, and access via a web interface would be nice.

posted by k5.user to Technology (9 answers total)

Is throwing them onto a small USB hard drive and putting that into a safe-deposit box out of the question? More of a sneaker-net solution but essentially unlimited storage, no worry about security, and no worries about losing track of the service that hosts them.

Just a thought. Maybe totally not what would work for you.
posted by BillMcMurdo at 11:06 AM on June 6, 2015

Depending on how much you're willing to pay, Amazon's Cloud Drive might do you. It's $60/yr for unlimited storage, but if you find something cheaper elsewhere, it's worth noting that if you've got Prime, you already have free unlimited photo storage.

I'm only using the photo storage, but it's a simple "upload new files from this folder" kind of thing, and the online interface is better than I'd expected. (Plus, obviously, the photo storage is an easy way to see how you feel about the service as a whole.)
posted by MeghanC at 11:16 AM on June 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you're willing to store photos separately, Flickr gives you 1 TB of free storage. I also want to say that Google will give you unlimited photo storage but at a capped (but still fine) size/resolution.
posted by J. Wilson at 12:10 PM on June 6, 2015

I love Crashplan, so just to make sure: you can easily specify which directories are backed up. It's not just the whole machine.
posted by hz37 at 12:11 PM on June 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

How much stuff do you have?

Amazon now includes unlimited photo with their prime membership, as well as 5GB for anything else you care to store.

Box.com has very reasonable prices for multi-gig storage too. $5 a month will get you 100 GB. Free account gets 10GB
posted by kschang at 1:30 PM on June 6, 2015

When I was looking for basically the same thing a couple of years ago I looked around and found Mediafire to be the cheapest solution... at the time they were offering 1 TB for $25/year. It's double that now, but that's still fairly cheap. I never see them in the cloud storage shootouts, which is weird.

Oh, and looking now, they're still (or again) offering 1TB for $2.49/month, with 2 months free if you sign up for a year, so that's the best deal by far I think. It works pretty much like Dropbox.
posted by Huck500 at 4:12 PM on June 6, 2015

If you aren't shy of technology and might like extra functionality, look into a small VPS with enough storage to satisfy your needs. This option will be more expensive than simple file hosting, but can be fun and offer many more options if you are so inclined.

Most VPS's will offer CPanel, which comes with webdisk simplifying the uploading and downloading of files between your local PC and the server.

Additionally, you can register and host domains on your VPS for quick websites to share files and photos, create email accounts at your registered domains for both yourself and family, and depending on your needs and frogginess, you can even set it up to stream audio & video, act as a torrent seed-box, or use it as a VPN/Proxy to bypass restrictive firewalls or better secure your web traffic from monitoring or interception.
posted by Th!nk at 4:29 PM on June 6, 2015

Response by poster: OK, after some consolidation, it looks like I have maybe 500 megs of non-pictures, unholy gobs of GB of pictures, and an unknown amount of movies (need to refine).

I'll probably dig up more than the 500 mb of non-pictures - one old machine left, now that I've sorted through the external drives, CDs and DVDs.

I'd prefer the lazy "here are my pictures, save them" rather than cull the gobs (about 7 years worth, averaging 8gb/month, ballpark).

I want to believe Google's compression doesn't sacrifice anything, but unsure. However, google's uploader (via photo backup util) ignores all hierarchy, and forces me to re-categorize (boo). I could use google drive, mapped locally, etc for hierarchy, unsure what problems I may encounter that way.
posted by k5.user at 6:58 PM on June 6, 2015

Google just released Photos, which is unlimited storage now (if you accept the compression rate; 15 gb if you want the original quality). Looks like you may have checked it out though, judging by your update?

I've also been using OneDrive, which is pretty affordable and quite reliable. It keeps folders as folders, so that is useful if you're concerned about hierarchy. My only complaint is that it can be a little slow, but it's actually gotten better and I suspect that they'll be improving it even more with the forthcoming Windows 10 release.

For a handy dandy chart of pros and cons, here's a consolidated review of the status of photo storage right now (this was written prior to Photos though).
posted by thebots at 12:27 AM on June 7, 2015