[Leica] Storage options: Amazon Simple Storage Services

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

> It sure does feel nice to get all these welcomes back. I sincerely
> appreciate it.
> 
> This is probably old hat to all now. I searched the archives, but
> didn't come up with anything.
> 
> I mentioned that I bought a Mac (MacBook Pro 13" screen). I run
> Lightroom on it and got myself to believe I would just use it for
> quick stuff while I was out and away.
> 
> Turned out that it became more and more my standard machine and
> backups started to become an issue. In my other work (the one that
> pays) I need a lot of storage space. "Too much" space is not a
> concept. Anyway, I ran into Amazon Simple Storage Services.
> 
> To make a long story short, if you store 1 gb (just lost this letter
> because I hit the command-4 to get a $ instead of the alt-4 and had to
> start over ... thinking about squirting some epoxy glue under that
> right-hand command key) 1 gb will cost 15 cents a month, 10 gb (real
> careful now) $ (made it) $1.50 a month.
> 
> I use it under GNU Linux at work and Mac OS X at home.
> 
> I download s3tools (a small set of Python scripts) ... there's
> probably a graphical interface too, but what I like about the MacBook
> is the command-line. (http://s3tools.org)
> 
> Start an account with AWS, get the access key, run the configuration
> for the scrips (which involves telling it what your secret access key
> is) and then:
> 
> 1) cd
> 2) s3cmd sync ./Pictures s3://photo-archive.dlridings.se/macbook/
> 
> and go to bed. It takes a while to upload everything the first time.
> 
> Then, after I've done some more work and want to save it, I just do
> the same thing:
> 
> 1) cd
> 2) s3cmd sync ./Pictures s3://photo-archive.dlridings.se/macbook/
> 
> But the second time it just synchronizes my local files on the MacBook
> with the files that are up there in the blue. If the local ones
> haven't changed, it doesn't upload them again.
> 
> s3cmd ls
> 
> will list your "buckets" (my bucket above is
> s3://photo-archive.dlridings.se) Everything else is an object. It kind
> of looks like they are files and directories
> (s3://photo-archive.dlridings.se/macbook/Pictures/Lightroom/etc) but
> all of the slashes after the bucket name are just letters in the
> filenames, not really directories.
> 
> It's just as easy to get things back. You can access them from
> anywhere that you have an internet connection. No more USB drives
> weighing you down when you're on the road.
> 
> Pretty nice stuff, and that's only the start. You can do quite a lot
> using their services.
> 
> http://aws.amazon.com/s3
> 
> SMUGMUG bases their system on it. The files can be private or public,
> so you can use them in web applications etc.
> 
> It _does_ cost a litte (also pennies) to transfer the files, but once
> they are there, they cost max (careful now) $.15 a gigabyte a month.
> 
> You can have your buckets reside in the US or the EU. It doesn't make
> any difference from a usage point of view. No matter where your
> "bucket" is, you can access it over the net. You just might save some
> speed across the wire.
> 
> If you have a whole turdload of files, you can send them a hard disk
> and they'll off-load it directly onto their internal net.
> 
> Nice back-up solution. If anyone can think of serious down-sides, I'd
> appreciate hearing about it. I'm pretty reliant on it.
> 
> Daniel
> 
> PS: I'm getting pretty tired of Google maps. Evidently CMD-4 (what I
> hit instead of ALT-4) is a shortcut to Google maps.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information


The down side is your body of work is who knows where being looked at and
done what with by who knows who.
A one tsp hard drive which sits next to your laptop if your doing photo
stuff cost $99 dollars and 99 cents. (But I'd spend a few dollars more and
get Firewire 800 with an 8 cylinder engine.)
And that's enough to store one billion pictures at .0000001 cents a mb.
And its in your immediate possession.
You're looking at it.
In the real world. Smell or a ama. 3D. You name it.


Mark William Rabiner