You can never have enough storage space ! Unfortunately, this is true. Besides the classic way (upgrading your server or getting an additional one), remote storage or iCloud storage is one way of doing it.

As a professional Photographer the amount of image data (RAW files, postproduction files, client files) produced per year is enormous. Now, I decided to test the remote storage solution myself: For the next month I will be using 500 GB provided by Strato.

The offer is fair:

• 500 GB
• free trail for 30 days
• 5 user / 1 admin account
• secure (encrypted) transfer
• unlimited traffic
• 16,90 € per month (after the trail period)

The first steps will be the download and installation of the “Hi-drive app” in order to include the additional space seamlessly into my existing setup. Then I will test the performance when transferring large amounts of data from my local server to the remote storage space.

First results will be presented here soon …

Update :

After around three hours STRATO was sending the login credentials and the Hi-Drive was activated. I started a first data transfer test with an image folder of 39,24 GB. Technically my maximum upload speed is 2.000 kbits/sec. Right now the “copy progress” indication says “50 h left” which would be roughly ten times slower than possible.

Update :

Now, 14 hours passed and 11 GB are uploaded. Considering the fact that 2,2 TB would have to be transferred, the amount of time necessary is the negative aspect.

Update : 07.03.2012

I finished my test today. During the upload of the 39 GB folder the transfer interrupted two times. With an average upload speed of 1.800 kbits/sec it took more than 2 days to complete the transfer. One has to permanently keep an eye on it to be able to interfere in case of a problem or interruption.

Personally, I would conclude that due to the limitations in currently available upload-speeds iCloud storage space is only practical for small amounts of data in the order of a few GB. Backing up a large data-archive of a few TB is still costly and would require weeks of upload time alone.
With an option to send in a physical hard drive for the initial data transfer (www.crashplan.com is offering this – unfortunately only in the United States) and higher upload speeds of let’s say 100 Mbits/sec, combined with moderate storage costs of let’s say 100 Eur per year for a TB of data, a combined system will make sense. Not yet …

So, Stay tuned …