Gerard, I have just visited the site and there's some great stuff on there, btw love your photos.

Thanks Eva and Anna.  I like the site.  Everyone is very friendly on there.  They make it nice and easy to say a photo you are uploading has mature content and that is as much fuss as they make about nudity. 

Flickr on the other hand seem to like making life complicated.  It is very easy to upload photos to flickr and not realise you haven't set the photo to say there is nudity.  If you're not careful you find yourself with a stroppy email and you're account on hold.  I've lost count of the number of people I've seen complaining about it. 

Gerard, I have also just visited the site. I love your architecture photographs, particularly those of castles and abbeys.

...
Flickr on the other hand seem to like making life complicated.  It is very easy to upload photos to flickr and not realise you haven't set the photo to say there is nudity.  If you're not careful you find yourself with a stroppy email and you're account on hold.  I've lost count of the number of people I've seen complaining about it. 

I've got Flickr set up for me so that the default upload is "Moderate", and I then have to manually change anything I want non-subscribers to be able to see to "Safe". Been OK for me so far.

Cheers,
nib

We have two flickr accounts one set up as safe by default and the other as restricted by default and we have had no problems with them so far.it also make it easier for showing family pics as we just give them the safe account details.

Think I'll sign up for deviantart, looks a good site and have heard good about it previously also. I have had some trouble with photobucket in the past.

I have 2x 2TB hard drives as a master storage unit for my digital photograhpy. Both hold the same files so I'd be very unlucky to loose all!

Nice set of pics Gerard.

The 'Bird' one is a Turnstone

The 'Bird' one is a Turnstone

Thanks for that.  I kept meaning to go look it up but never got there.  🙂

I'm looking for a site where I can store video, mark it private (so it can not be browsed by Joe Soap) but still share it through websites or emails. I can do this with still images in Flickr but not (so far as I can see) with video.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Ian.

I use Vimeo.
Their terms state that they are nudity tolerant and you can set videos up as private with a password.

I wonder what advantage is there in using the net for storage and not just buy a terabyte or larger hard drive.

I wonder what advantage is there in using the net for storage and not just buy a terabyte or larger hard drive.

The main advantage of the net is that it is a backup copy away from your main copies.  You can backup on to a hard drive but if you have a fire or all your computer equipment gets stolen, you have lost the lot.  It is best if you can keep a backup that isn't in the same location as your PC.  This could be on a hard drive with a friend or at work.

I must admit I probably go a bit over the top with backups of my photos.  I have a current copy on my server at home + two copies on DVDs.  The whole of my server is then backed up onto two alternating external hard drives. 

I wonder what advantage is there in using the net for storage and not just buy a terabyte or larger hard drive.

The main advantage of the net is that it is a backup copy away from your main copies.  You can backup on to a hard drive but if you have a fire or all your computer equipment gets stolen, you have lost the lot.  It is best if you can keep a backup that isn't in the same location as your PC.  This could be on a hard drive with a friend or at work.

I must admit I probably go a bit over the top with backups of my photos.  I have a current copy on my server at home + two copies on DVDs.  The whole of my server is then backed up onto two alternating external hard drives. 

My take on this is that you use the net if you want others to have access and CDs or external hard drives for backup.

The three things to remember are:
(i) While storage on a remote server will be safe against all the usual fire/flood/tempest hazards it is never absolutely secure against hacking access.
(ii) In computing you don't have a permanant copy of anything until you have at least two independent copies.
(iii) The independent sopies should be stored in such a way that no realistic catastrophne could destroy both/all of them.

When I was working I had a bit of a dispute with the company's insurers who said that back-up copies must be off-site and I was keeping them in a fire safe at the other end of the site. My argument was that there was half a mile and several fire breaks between the two fire safe locations and that any catastrophe which could take out two top quality fire safes that far apart would also have taken out most of Streatham, in which case reconstituting the factory's payroll, stock control, etc. would be well down the priority list.

Also bear in mind that back-ups on external sites are good only as long as the company providing the service lasts, which in the fast-changing world of the Internet is not always for ever. And provided you keep paying, or provided their terms for free service continue unchanged. And they don't suddenly decide to delete images they don't like.

I use weekly-rotating external hard drives (one at home one in my drawer at work) and CDs for back-up and photosites for sharing.

Cheers,
nib

I think I shall do as “Nib” a large external drive, I do not share photos so have no reason to keep them on the net and will back up my pc drive to this and put it in the safe, perhaps do a back up once a month.
 
Until recently, I have never bothered with backing up anything but did used to put photos on Cd’s. 🙂

I know this is a bit off topic for the thread but I think there are couple of points that may be worth emphasizing.

My take on this is that you use the net if you want others to have access and CDs or external hard drives for backup.

The net isn't just for viewing web pages.  Especially now Microsoft, Google, etc are now pushing "Cloud" technology which uses the net for storing your data.  Microsoft seems to be pushing virtual online servers to replace a local system.  This would put ALL your data online.  There are plenty of companies offering online backup facilities.  They have all the facilities in place to recover when their hardware/software fails.  It isn't a suitable option for everyone. 

While storage on a remote server will be safe against all the usual fire/flood/tempest hazards it is never absolutely secure against hacking access.

Never view any computer connected to a network as absolutely secure.  If your computer has a route to the internet, it is vulnerable.  Trojans are pieces of software designed to hack into your system.  They can give someone unrestricted access to your system.   There are people out there who's whole reason for existing seems to be to write software to bypass computer security.  You should change your passwords on a regular basis.  This will make it harder for anyone trying a brute force attack (trying passwords until they find one that works) on a system.  Passwords are better that contain upper+lowercase characters and numbers.  Don't use short passwords.

I would always recommend that you have at least 3 copies of anything you want to keep.  I have had too many people come to me after their system has failed and the the one and only backup has failed too.  It's terrible when you loose that precious photo or document that can be never replaced.  It's no fun having to tell someone that has just happened either.

Nibs hard drive/CD regime is good and I wish more people followed his example.  It might be more work to do but it could save a lot of grief one day.

The world unfortunately is full of people who never think about backups until they need them and then it is too late.  It is no good shutting the stable door once the horse has bolted.

...perhaps do a back up once a month.

You need to ask yourself a simple question:  "How important are the things I haven't backed up yet?" How often you do a backup depends on how much your system changes.  Unless your computer fails immediately after doing a backup you are going to loose something.  The more time there is between backups increases the amount of data you stand to loose.  With my photos I back them up immediately after I put them on my computer.  Before I delete them from the camera, I will have a copy on my PC and a copy on the server.  I will usually initiate  a server backup that same day.