There’s one thing that I fear when it comes to my storage and that is to lose all the pictures I’ve been taking for all these years. I have seen customers of mine that have lost all their images due to a hard disk crashing and seen the tears. I usually do my regular backup using TimeMachine on my Mac to an Apple Time Capsule. But my photo library in Adobe Lightroom is too big to fit on the SSD drive used in my MacBook Pro, and TimeMachine doesn’t do a backup of external drives. So I use rsync to make a backup to my NAS which uses RAID–1 for extra protection. But I don’t want to rely on a single backup. A fire, burglary or simple hardware failure makes me uneasy. So I also do an off-site backup using the excellent Arq backup program.
Arq Backup with Amazon Glacier
Up till now, I’ve been using Amazon Glacier to store all my images. It’s cheap, with about $0.01 per Gb per month to store your information in the cloud, and an additional transfer cost for uploading all the images. But that’s a one time cost and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. So I’ve been quite happy with the solution. But there is a downside. If you need to restore your data, there is an initial waiting period and the faster you download your data, the more expensive it gets. And it can get crazy expensive if you’re in a hurry. Add that to the fact that you have to be a rocket scientist to actually calculate how much it will cost, makes it even more annoying.
Enter Arq backup with Google Cloud Storage Nearline
The people at Haystack software, the makers of Arq just sent out an email.
Google just announced a new storage service that’s better than Glacier!
Google Cloud Storage Nearline is a great option for backups because it’s only $.01/GB per month for storage cost, and it’s much, much easier to restore your files from Google Nearline than from Amazon Glacier. There’s no 4-hour delay, and Google doesn’t incur any crazy “peak hourly request” fees if you restore too quickly. The Nearline pricing is much easier to understand in general than Glacier’s confusing fees. When storage providers compete, Arq users win!
If you’re already paying for a Dropbox or Google Drive account with lots of storage, Arq can back up to that storage. Otherwise, if you want to only pay for what you use, Google Cloud Storage Nearline seems just about perfect.
Isn’t competition great?
So now I’m moving my backup over to Google Nearline Storage. First impression after creating the account and choosing the location for my backup? Faster upload than Amazon Glacier. So that’s a big plus. Arq backup gives you a lot of options on where and how to do your backup, but it now seems like Google has the upper hand.
And for those who think that Google already has enough of your information, I’m happy to inform you that you can encrypt your backup with a password, so no one except you can get to the information.
Charles says
I think you meant “…about $0.01 per *G*b per month…” in paragraph 2.
Jack Zimmermann says
You’re absolutely right, my mistake. Fixed now. Thanks!