Online Storage Advice Needed

[J_Thompson]

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I have a question that perhaps one of you more savvy members might be able to answer.

 

I'm a member of a 200 member volunteer group (i.e. no money) that has three photographers with which to document our people and activities. It's always a chore to get our images to the webmaster as we have to editorially pick the images and then send them to him as attachments in an email. As a result of this, he gets many images that he does not need.

 

What we need is online storage where he can then access the images and make choices at his leisure. Can anyone suggest such a site that can only be accessed by permitted persons and not by the general public? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[andybarton]

Set up a private account on Flickr that only certain members have access to.

[richam]

Check out http://www.dropbox.com

[sanyasi]

I would recommend Sugarsync, but I don't think it is probably a good fit for large photo files.

http://www.sugarsync.com

 

Two important thing to keep in mind. Take a close look at upload and download speeds. For word processing and spreadsheets, it doesn't matter. But it could pose a problem for large files like RAW, particularly if turn around is critical.

 

Second, pay attention to whether the system will upload from external and networked hard drives. Some systems only work with the hard drive on the computer. I believe that is the case with SugarSync, but check if you are interested.

 

Many companies offer a trial, so before committing test the system. Go with a legitimate company. You don't want the FBI to swoop in and shut the system because they facilitate illegal movie and music sharing. That happened earlier this year and the initial reports was that legitimate customers couldn't get to their files. Along those lines, don't rely on any system as your exclusive storage source.

[Ruhayat]

+1 for Dropbox. I've been using it in my 3-man graphic design studio and it's been incredibly useful whenever 2 of us are outstation on a job shoot, and the other is at home base grabbing the photos and dumping them into the design. Works much, much better than email. The only caveat is you need a fast connection to sync files.

[Ruhayat]

Forgot to mention:

Dropbox recently seems to add an automatic Camera Upload feature that grabs photos off whatever SD card or thumbdrive you stick into your laptop or PC, and then stores those images in a Dropbox folder. Very convenient.

 

I don't work for Dropbox, am not affiliated to it, or earn any income from it, by the way.

[steveclem]

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+1 for Dropbox but it's early days for me.

[Ruhayat]

+1 for Dropbox but it's early days for me.

 

That brings up another point: we've been using Dropbox in our studio for a while now and it works out great. The one danger, though, is when you have a new user joining a shared folder, who has never used Dropbox before. They might end up accidentally erasing files forever from that folder.

 

The problem is, to my knowledge at least, Dropbox doesn't give admin privileges to protect files. Anyone can dump and delete files at will once they become members of a shared folder. And when one of your team members delete files in a folder on "their" Dropbox, those same files are also wiped out from everyone's Dropbox. I've had 2 scares relating to this when I first started using Dropbox and invited clients to join a shared folder.

 

So the first rule of Dropbox is: always have a back up that is on a separate drive from the one where your Dropbox folder is located. (Because if you "backup" from your Dropbox into a folder that is on the same disk, the files will simply be moved out from the Dropbox folder into the new location).

 

It sounds complicated at first especially when you use it in a group, yes. But once you understand the underlying mindset required, it's as easy as using a folder on a local drive.