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Inexpensive cloud storage. This should be useful for your photo archives.

http://boxfreeit.com.au/2013/10/10/amaz ... to-sydney/

Call me stupid but I have never looked on cloud storage as being a safe answer for backups. In this modern day and age so many companies go to the wall and with America in its fast fall into oblivion even the likes of Amazon, Google and the rest of them are not 100% safe. Think dot.com lol

Mmm... not sure I would equate Amazon with dot.com as they have a substantial and profitable product set ... dot.com was all about share values mismatching other key commercial indicators like net and gross turnover etc.

When people started to suggest, during dot.com, that fundamental economics like actually producing something (other than marketing material) and making an income (other than share price speculation) was no longer required to drive commerce, everyone needed to smell the BS.

Anyway... as far a backup I always recommend a multicopy approach... no one option is safe in the end.
Nothing wrong with the Glacier product as part of a solution but do your math carefully.
There are both holding costs and retrieval costs to be aware of.

Michael,

I'm wondering if Chris might be referring to Kim Dotcom and the issues he and his sites faced?

But you are both correct in many ways. You do need to exercise caution in selecting any off-site storage, but Amazon might be a good choice for one such selection.

As you say, having multiple sites goes a long way towards mitigating any risks, but we also need to be aware of any hidden costs: if you're a Telstra customer (or using a wireless connection) then your uploads may be metered, and thus you would need to monitor just how much content you're sending into the cloud.

That said, I've been using the cloud for several years now, and the convenience that it offers me is wonderful. Consider, for instance, if youre travelling: put your travel documents (tickets, receipts, main page of your passport) into the cloud. While losing the originals might still be quite inconvenient, having access to digital copies might assist traversing the rocky road that a total loss of these documents might cause.

Yep... I carry a few cloud access points with me where ever I go and working toward syncing them all in the near future.
But... being aware the cost of loading and downloading to whatever device, especially mobile devices, is critical whilst the Australian market continues to be so expensive.

For things like documents when travelling, dropbox is sufficient beause the file sizes won't be that great. But consider what is happening in the Blue Mountains. Probably none of the burnt-out houses will have had off-site backup, and a neighbour's house wouldn't have been much use. Economically, it seems the day for cloud backup may have arrived.

Funnily enough the chief controller and I were discussing this only yesterday as we drove through multiple fires/smoke. Cloud storage isn't much good for me as I rarely have decent internet, even at home. (These little Optus dongles are pretty poor in regional areas, and the only other option is Telstra, whom I avoid like the plague.) Offsite storage of my photos is one thing we're considering eg hard drive as a relative's place, plus the option of a small fireproof container for maybe a hard drive, passports, documents etc. Not sure if the HDD would survive a fire though. We live right next to thick scrub which will, one day, go up!