Online Backup taking 69 days!?! Is this normal?

[digiman]

Sorry if this is in the wrong section, feel free to move if necessary !

Knowing that HDDs have a limited lifespan, I have last night taken the plunge for online backup. After a lot of reading of reviews etc, I registered with Backblaze for a free trial. On starting I clicked on "How long will my backup take?" The first estimate was 138 days So, I did a speed check on my broadband. Download speed a respectable 56mb. Upload speed, 2.16mb. WHAAAT!! Not only that, but after an hour of use, continuous use, they reduce that by around 30%, then after 2 hours a further 20%. This is rediculous. So, in an effort to try and reduce the time, I opened up the bandwidth to full for backblaze to use, meaning that I can't really use my browser for anything else because all resources are going to my backup. I also took two of my hard drives out of the backup, so it's really just my onsite backup drive that is being backed up!

Have you any suggestions to try and speed things up? Is there a way to compress files to speed up uploading? Or, is this just the way it is? I know nothing about this stuff, so any help appreciated,

Cheers,

Garry

[Enigma]

Re: Online Backup taking 69 days!?! Is this normal?

Most online backups are designed to be incremental / differential to minimise ongoing traffic but this does mean the initial backup "may take some time."

Are the speeds you quoted in mega bits or bytes? You may find your broadband connection is just not fast enough for online backup to be viable.

What is the approximate volume of data you are trying to upload?

[digiman]

Re: Online Backup taking 69 days!?! Is this normal?

Most online backups are designed to be incremental / differential to minimise ongoing traffic but this does mean the initial backup "may take some time."

Are the speeds you quoted in mega bits or bytes? You may find your broadband connection is just not fast enough for online backup to be viable.

What is the approximate volume of data you are trying to upload?

Thanks for the reply. It is a LOT of data, maybe about 1.1TB? As for the speeds, not sure, I think mega bits. Certainly the download speed is.

I realise that it is a huge amount of data initially, and a lot of this is likely bad housekeeping on my part with a lot of stuff that doesn't really need backing up. I may have to do a mass cull on files. The majority is photos though. About 20,000 images, most of which are in RAW. I guess, thinking about it, I could hold off on the music etc for now, and do that at a later stage. This is all a bit foreign to me!

Thanks again,

Garry

[antoeknee]

Re: Online Backup taking 69 days!?! Is this normal?

Your upload speed, important in this case, is low for the connection you mention I'd expect it to be more like 7-8meg at minimum.

Backing up that amount of data all in one go will take ages, get ready to make lots of cups of tea!

[digiman]

Re: Online Backup taking 69 days!?! Is this normal?

Your upload speed, important in this case, is low for the connection you mention I'd expect it to be more like 7-8meg at minimum.

Backing up that amount of data all in one go will take ages, get ready to make lots of cups of tea!

I know. Something that Virginmedia bury in their small print is the low upload speed. They sell you on the download first

[2Beers]

Re: Online Backup taking 69 days!?! Is this normal?

You would be best doing your upload overnight when your connection isnt being used and pausing it during the day

[digiman]

Re: Online Backup taking 69 days!?! Is this normal?

You would be best doing your upload overnight when your connection isnt being used and pausing it during the day

I've just left it going all day and all night. No one uses it through the day anyway. And the speed is just the same. I'm thinking about starting again but this time being more selective about what I am backing up on initial upload.

[djguk47]

Re: Online Backup taking 69 days!?! Is this normal?

I use a cloud back up service for all my images and other photography work I had done for others and all in it took about a week for the initial download which I did in "bite sized pieces". It was about 3 TB in total.
When the incremental backups run now it takes about 10 minutes to 30 minutes max. The longer time when I have just downloaded a couple of hundred images onto my hard drives before a scheduled on line back up.

[DrJon]

Re: Online Backup taking 69 days!?! Is this normal?

...or you could just buy a 2TB USB3 drive, copy the files onto that and leave it with a handy sibling/etc?

[LesC2009]

Re: Online Backup taking 69 days!?! Is this normal?

I backed mine up to Amazon Prime, took about 5 days on & off to do 650+ GB. My broadband is about 18Mbps.

With Amazon Prime you get unlimited storage for photos and all the other benefits - free next day delivery, Amazon TV etc for £79 a year. Videos only 5GB but you can set up a flickr account for them ;) Or Amazon do an unlimited photos & video plan for £55 a year - there's a free 3 month trial too.

I also back mine up to two 2TB drives as Dr Jon suggests & leave one with a neighbour ...

[Nathaniel]

Re: Online Backup taking 69 days!?! Is this normal?

I thought I would remind members about the dangers of "on line backups" with the present furore about Pippa Middleton's photographs being hacked into. I back up and prefer to back up on to another hard drive and am happy to do this.

[digiman]

Re: Online Backup taking 69 days!?! Is this normal?

Thanks all for the input. I appreciate the advice re offsite hard drives etc, but, I've had so many people say that it is only a matter of time before a HDD fails, the only way is online. Since buying my HDDs, I have read that the ones I have bought are amongst the most likely to fail as well I thought through research that Seagate and Samsung were good makes, but apparently not so. That said, I am tempted to just buy a Toshiba or Western Digital and be done with it.

[Nathaniel]

Re: Online Backup taking 69 days!?! Is this normal?

I back up to a Seagate external hard drive about once a month. Just to be on the safe side I also ensure I have a few photo prints of some of my pictures and that is good enough for me.

[antoeknee]

Re: Online Backup taking 69 days!?! Is this normal?

Having something off site would be ideal but as you've found the initial setup is quite protracted.

Really puzzled by the doom and gloom about HD longevity. Only ever had one HD fail at home and when I use to work in IT with several hundred devices if we had one a year fail then that was as bad as it ever got.

If your happy to store at home, which I am. Then one of two options a NAS box, likely to be a bit more expensive than the second option. I'm assuming a desktop here, get 2 external HD's use one to store the images and using free software back this up to the second. You'd be exceptionally unlucky for 2 drives to fail at the same time. I back up every day, its automated and incremental so no intervention needed by me.

If I'm leaving the house for a reasonable period (days) I unplug one drive and leave with a relative who lives close buy. Just being paranoid about fire or break in!

[djguk47]

Re: Online Backup taking 69 days!?! Is this normal?

6 bay QNAPP NAS box with 4 Western Digital Red 3 Tb drives, 2 unused bays for future use if needed, maybe for streaming movies or used remotely by daughter at Uni for her Uni work . RAID 1 and auto backup. Full personal Cloud. One drive off site.

This will do until SSD's get to a sensible price. SSD's = no moving parts but that is not to say they cannot go unserviceable.

Currently use Just Cloud until contract runs out then all fully on the QNAPP NAS.