The downside of online photo hosting/cloud storage....

[brewmaster15]

Hi all,
Share a story here as to the downside of using online/cloud based storage of your pics.

About 11 years ago I had my photos stored online with a business .It was great upload the pics, print which ones I liked leave the rest for storage. I had a bunch of forum related pics there, and family pics..Iincluding pics from my sons Birth.

I don't even remember the name of the outfit but they went under and luckily their assets and servers were taken over by a company called winkflash. All was good for many years and I continued to use them for a while.

I've been trying to reset my password there the last few days as I havent been able to log in For awhile now...though the sites up and running.I had wanted to access some old pics of planted tanks I had there... I finally got a reply to an inquiry I made a few days ago...

[brewmaster15]

Dear Winkflash Customer,

We would first like to offer our sincere apologies.

As you may know, in August 2014 the previous Winkflash owners shut down their website and went suddenly out of business. Overnight their entire operation was completely down and there was no way to access or retrieve any photos.

However, after a few months we were able to acquire some of the old Winkflash assets and with great effort and expense, were to save many tens of millions of photos…but unfortunately, not all. We are very sorry for all of the trouble, stress and confusion this has caused you.

As of now, we no longer have access to the servers in the former owner’s datacenter. We are truly very sorry and have put in countless hours and did our best…but because of the quick shutdown of the previous owners…the window of recovery was much shorter than expected.

No words can ever be sufficient for the loss of your memories. Please accept this small token of a $50 credit. If you are interested in taking advantage of this credit, please contact us again with your WinkFlash email account and we will add it to your account.

Sincerely,

Winkflash

So there you have it...years of photos, my sons birth, gone just like that.

Luckily I have my sons birth on a harddrive and Discs.

Al

[Ardan]

Al,
Glad you had those photos of your sons birth on discs. You never know when those companies will close and without warning. There should be a law that gives you time to retrieve photos before they shut down.


Ardan

[Second Hand Pat]

Glad you had a backup copy of your son's birth pictures Al. Those pictures are not replaceable.
Pat

[brewmaster15]

Me Too Pat,
But it just drives home the lesson that businesses that you trust to store your photos and data in general really aren't safe long term storage. I think if you look closely at their terms of use, they are full of disclaimers in case something happens.

Businesses go out of Business all the time, companies spin off their assets, and data centers can be breached, corrupted and exploited. Keep a back up of your pics and data on Hard drives, and burned to DVDs.

A photo captures a moment in Time that can never be repeated again....don't lose them because its easy to upload your pictures somewhere for free or even as a paid subscription. Theres no Guarantee it will always be there.

hth,
al

[rickztahone]

"Here's $50 for your lost lifelong memories, that's enough right? Right? Yeah, I'm sure that is enough"

Even though this person is apologizing, the reply has no sense of compassion for the devastating loss. In fact, I believe the monitary compensation to be a slap in the face and would probably be better without it.

[SteveCA]

An additional point to consider is the types of photos we store on online services. I would never store anything on those sites that you would not want compromised. For example, photos of your wife in her birthday suit.

Secondly, I would never use any online site as your sole storage. I use Amazon cloud as a backup of my onsite redundant hard drives. I keep all my photos and videos on three different drives, one of which is stored offsite with Amazon cloud as a "backup".

[rickztahone]

An additional point to consider is the types of photos we store on online services. I would never store anything on those sites that you would not want compromised. For example, photos of your wife in her birthday suit.

Secondly, I would never use any online site as your sole storage. I use Amazon cloud as a backup of my onsite redundant hard drives. I keep all my photos and videos on three different drives, one of which is stored offsite with Amazon cloud as a "backup".

yes, this is the best way. I keep one large drive off site as well and only bring it in once a month or so to update.

[SMB2]

Ricardo, I do the same thing. If I am going to loose files, I want it to be my fault not some place in the Cloud.
I am starting to rethink my off site backup as there are now products (EHD) that you can leave anywhere attached to a router and access it from your home computer. So off site back up can be done from anywhere you have internet access.
All drives fail...that is the take home message.

[rickztahone]

Ricardo, I do the same thing. If I am going to loose files, I want it to be my fault not some place in the Cloud.
I am starting to rethink my off site backup as there are now products (EHD) that you can leave anywhere attached to a router and access it from your home computer. So off site back up can be done from anywhere you have internet access.
All drives fail...that is the take home message.

Cool, I did not know that. I will check that out.

[brewmaster15]

I thought I would give an update of this sad event. I had decided that I would not use the credit "Winkflash" gave me. I reallydid not want anything to do with them at the time. I eventually decided, I may as well use them to print out my sons photos. I uploaded the pics.. 41 pictures, in duplicate and they applied the credit... To the pictures. They apparently were not sorry enough to apply the credit to the shipping as well. $17 in shipping fees for $16 worth of 4X6 pictures. Needless to say I did not order. I did try email customer service, and got no where.


So back to my original point in this thread. ..becareful where you store your precious memories and the businesses you chose to work with.:(

al

[strawberryblonde]

Awww, I hadn't seen this thread before Al, so sorry you lost your photo's!

I download my photo's from my camera straight to my second drive on my computer. I've partitioned that drive and it stores ALL my software (other than Windows) on one partition, all documents and photo's on another partition and all my client work and files on the third partition.

I also have a WD (Western Digital) external backup drive that I use once a month to backup those three partitioned drives. That way even in the event that my C: drive fails and I need to format and start over, I won't lose anything, not even my software.

I refuse to use any cloud services at all. I don't want to rely on someone else to protect and store my stuff and I sure as heck don't ever want my stuff stolen should they be hacked. Oh and I'm cheap. I spent a total of $69 for my WD backup drive and nothing at all for the second drive in my pc - just formatted my drive from my old pc and plopped it in there.

[dragon1974]

An additional point to consider is the types of photos we store on online services. I would never store anything on those sites that you would not want compromised. For example, photos of your wife in her birthday suit.

Secondly, I would never use any online site as your sole storage. I use Amazon cloud as a backup of my onsite redundant hard drives. I keep all my photos and videos on three different drives, one of which is stored offsite with Amazon cloud as a "backup".

+1

[warblad79]

I have RAID system, multiple clone drives, backup image, external HD. I have exact copy of my data files with every system I have. I like to have control over to all my data so I never use cloud base storage. It don't matter if my system got hacked, infected by the virus or my HD crash. I'll just pop another clone drive and no need to reinstall the whole OS. Most of my data are offline so they don't get compromise.

[aquafrogstuff]

I see a lot of people that think they have backup redundancy because they have RAID - you need to consider a scenario where the house burns down or the place gets burgled and NAS stolen - you need both RAID (onsite) and cloud (or offsite) for import docs/photos etc in my view.

[Discus-n00b]

Agreed with the above. However I still will not trust cloud storage. Not yet. You play Russian roulette with an actual hard drive too....but I trust it more in my hands than someone else's. My next build will be a RAID system/media server for the house.

[rickztahone]

I see a lot of people that think they have backup redundancy because they have RAID - you need to consider a scenario where the house burns down or the place gets burgled and NAS stolen - you need both RAID (onsite) and cloud (or offsite) for import docs/photos etc in my view.

I actually keep 1 huge HD off site at my mothers house and bring it in every month to update it. It is a pain, but one I am willing to do for that "just in case" moment.

[warblad79]

I see a lot of people that think they have backup redundancy because they have RAID - you need to consider a scenario where the house burns down or the place gets burgled and NAS stolen - you need both RAID (onsite) and cloud (or offsite) for import docs/photos etc in my view.

I'm planning to buy a fire proof storage for backups, they have it at Costco like $300

[warblad79]

If you ever decided to save your data or backup to cloud storage make sure they're fully encrypted as highest as possible.

[brewmaster15]

I see a lot of people that think they have backup redundancy because they have RAID - you need to consider a scenario where the house burns down or the place gets burgled and NAS stolen - you need both RAID (onsite) and cloud (or offsite) for import docs/photos etc in my view.

Very valid..you could also duplicate your files on an external drive and leave it with family or a friend.

Drop box as a cloud alternative is very good as well .

Hth,al