I've heard too many stories of people losing creative work because of hard drive/computer failure... if we're doing serious work we should have a solid backup scheme in place... backing up media files is tough because they take up so much space... I have all my source files... 3d renders, project files, final shot renders backed up to multiple hard drives... those are big files so they need dedicated physical drives for practical backup...
BUT right now I'm working mostly in Adobe Premiere Pro so my Premiere Pro project files are the valuable thing right now... even if I lost the media on my computer I could restore it from the backup's... but without all the work I've done in the project files its not very useful... so these project files are valuable and not too big around 50- 150 megs... perfect for cloud storage!
As of today there's a lot of free options... the three I'm using as online data backup are...
Dropbox... they don't give you much free space at 2gb which you can grind on to get 5gb but its great for collaborating with other people online
Google Drive... this just launched but I've tested it out and it works great... you get 5gb's for free off the bat
Microsoft Skydrive... now they give you 7gb for free which is nice BUT if you already have a hotmail account or windows live ID or whatever you just click a button and get 25gb for free!
Now I can't vouch for the security of any of these services so as always be wary... and it seemed odd that amongst the launching of all these free cloud services CISPA is the new HORRIBLE thang being rushed through by the US govt.. so yeh keep yer shady activities off the cloud just to be safe ^ ^
Also for ultimate security you can encode your files before sticking em on the cloud if they are sensitive materials at all... if yer on a PC use 7zip to create AES 256 encrypted archives and if yer on a Mac use disk utility to create a new image and secure it using AES 256 encryption then put that thang on the cloud...
But yeh there's no excuse for losing scripts and other important documents unless you don't have net access....
If this is all too complicated and yer files are less than 25 megs you can do a poor mans cloud backup... use your Gmail or whatever and mail the file to yourself and like don't delete it ^ ^
Cloud storage is a good backup but it's no substitute for a bunch of usb harddrives for backing up data. Internet connections can go flaky especially if you're on DSL over old copper lines like I am so I only get 3megs down max :(
ReplyDeleteThe 3D lossless masters for 'Origin A Call to Minds' are 167 megs... not counting all the source files.. 3D, renders, shots, texture plates, sound clips... I've got easily 3 TB spread out over a bunch of backups. Cloud storage would take forever to UL/DL at that size :( ...but it's a good idea for somewhere to stick the 'finals' ie divx / mp4 encodes and dvd isos...
I recently read somewhere that the new CS6 release is going to have some sort of cloud service built into it
ReplyDeleteI read similar internet rumors about autodesk for future 3Dmax and Maya versions will be 'cloud only'. One more reason to use Blender. I'm going to be checking out this: http://www.lightworksbeta.com/ for video editing and effects next, and I'm using Reaper from now on for all my audio sync and music: http://www.reaper.fm/
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