Head in the cloud

Your article in AP 23 June about cloud storage is a useful summary of the costs of the main providers. However, consideration of the time it will take to send your precious files to the cloud and their subsequent security is also important.

I also automatically (via batch processes) send to two cloud providers every day, alternating between them. Few AP readers can afford the costs of a fast upload service (leased line) as these start at about £150 per month and with lots of camera pixels you’ll get large files being produced. I only send up my raw files – these are about 30 megabytes each – and it takes about six to eight minutes to send each one. A full day’s shooting means you may have an awful lot of them.

If you read some providers’ T&Cs you are never sure whether they reserve the right to use your photos as they think fit (especially true if they are not charging for the storage for photographs). My solution is to encrypt each file before uploading so that no one can see the contents.

Finally, always keep your own copies of everything you send, in case your cloud provider gets sold, goes bust, drops free hosting or you stop paying them. Lee Galyer

Lee, this is great advice. We try to cover most of the bases in our features, but space is limited, so this is useful extra information, and a great Letter of the Week – Nigel Atherton, editor