# One way back up to Amazon photos



## sylvie27 (Apr 29, 2020)

Hi:

I'm all set up with LR Classing, syncing to LR Cloud.
Now, I'm organizing my backups. I set up a backup to a portable hard drive using Vice Versa (as recommended in the FAQ book).
Still, I need to have an offsite backup.  Since I have Amazon Prime, I would love to find a system that offers one way backup to Amazon. If I delete a photo in  Classic, I want it to be deleted in Amazon as well.
Any recommendations?
I tried O Drive, but it's not clear if this is what I'm looking for.

Sylvie


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## Paul_DS256 (Apr 29, 2020)

I use Cloudberry Desktop to backup up to Amazon Glazier. What I found that while Amazon had a good cheap service, their utilities were poor hence my selection of Cloudberry.  Having said that, I only use this configuration for backing up documents and email. I have not made the jump to photos yet. One reason is I'm still figuring out how to only backup photos with a particular star rating.

If you are thinking of backing everything up, I believe Amazon provides a service where you can send them a disk with your initial load. This eliminates the days that it would normally take if your collection is anything like the size of mine.

Please post your results on what/how you choose to do this. I would be interested in your experience.


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## clee01l (Apr 29, 2020)

Paul_DS256 said:


> I use Cloudberry Desktop to backup up to Amazon Glazier.


I think the OP is looking for a free access to Amazon's Unlimited Photos.     Amazon Drive is a folder management system  which sync to Amazon Photos but is not free either.    There is AFAIK  no app to Add photos to the free  Amazon Photos destination.  O-Drive can manage to Amazon Drive, but not to the Free Photos storage.  You can Create a Photos Album form an Amazon Drive Folder but this is a sharing of the same files on two different areas of Amazon.  Also it is a  one way one time since and I have not been able to manage my Folder/Albums automatically.


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## Paul_DS256 (Apr 29, 2020)

clee01l said:


> I think the OP is looking for a free access to Amazon's Unlimited Photos.


Oh! Thanks Cletus. I was not aware of the Amazon Photo Service. I'm not an Amazon Prime member and it's been about a long time since I researched options for cloud backup.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Apr 29, 2020)

The Amazon regular clouds like S3 and Glacier work nicely with a lot of programs, Cloudberry being perhaps my favorite, also Goodsync.

Amazon Cloud Drive aka Amazon Photo Service has been designed so it is difficult to use as a backup, and when companies manage it (as Goodsync did) Amazon actively disables their access (As they did to Goodsync, without notice).  Prior to that ACD_CLI was an open source version, also explicitly disabled by Amazon. So while "free" is nice, it is not a good backup solution as whoever has an option for doing it will likely find it disabled.

S3 is really good but expensive, Glacier is pretty good but has a lot of gotcha's that can cost money, I find Backblaze B2 a better a la carte solution than either.


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## Gnits (Apr 29, 2020)

Good summary, also I can never work out how to estimate my likely S3 monthly/annual costs.


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## Paul_DS256 (Apr 30, 2020)

Ferguson said:


> S3 is really good but expensive, Glacier is pretty good but has a lot of gotcha's that can cost money,


I haven't found it expensive. My bill last month was for US$2.66 for around 255GB of data. So about 1 cent per gigabyte but this includes the I/O charges as well which in most cases is a write to S3 Glacier.

Amazon services is the only company I've dealt with where I've received 3 price decreases over the time I've used them. Cloudberry is actually a higher cost.


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## Paul_DS256 (Apr 30, 2020)

Gnits said:


> I can never work out how to estimate my likely S3 monthly/annual costs


I hear you Gnits. I just had to log in and look and it is as we use to say 'non-trivial'.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Apr 30, 2020)

Paul_DS256 said:


> I haven't found it expensive. My bill last month was for US$2.66 for around 255GB of data. So about 1 cent per gigabyte but this includes the I/O charges as well which in most cases is a write to S3 Glacier.


S3 standard pricing is $0.023/GB (source).   Whether that's expensive or cheap depends on how many images you have. 

Your comment about glacier probably means you are using that (which I guess is technically "S3 Glacier" but today is the first time I heard that term).  That is $0.004/GB, with a deeper frozen version at $0.00099.   My guess is you have some lifecycle rules or otherwise are moving items into Glacier, so that's why it is cheaper than it might seem. 

Glacier requires you wait a period of time to download items, i.e. you put in a request and wait.

B2 pricing is $0.005/GB, so it's slightly more than Glacier without the restrictions on download waits. 

Both have other transactional costs but both usually do not cost much for those unless you are doing a mass upload the first time, or a mass download for recovery.  For the latter you probably don't care if they charge you a penny a gig or so to get the data back. 

S3 also has all sorts of there options like reduced redundancy which can save a bit more on standard S3, but I don't think on glacier, but not sure.   Amazon's pricing is a lot like Photoshop -- learn all you want to about it, but before you finish one pass of learning they've added a whole new set -- you will never catch up.   It's one reason I liked B2, simpler .

Not canabalizing all this a la carte storage money is why they didn't want Amazon Cloud Drive (with its unlimited photo storage) to be usable for backup.


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## Paul_DS256 (Apr 30, 2020)

Ferguson said:


> Glacier requires you wait a period of time to download items, i.e. you put in a request and wait.


I've never found there is a wait time Feguson. The few times I've needed to recover a document, I've used Cloudberry and it downloaded. No waiting. I went looking in the AWS S3 Glacier page and see where there 'can be' a delay but so far I have not encountered it.

For archive backups, where you will not touch a file unless there is an emergency, I've been very happy with S3 Glacier.


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## Gnits (Apr 30, 2020)

Is there a plug-in for Lightroom which supports exporting or Publishing to S3 or S3 Glacier.

While I have a robust backup setup, I do have a 1TB fibre connection and maybe it is time for me to start saving to offsite for my 5 star raw and  PSD files. Run for a few months and progress from there.  Ideal time to setup such a service. Maybe it is there already and I just have to look.


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## Paul_DS256 (Apr 30, 2020)

Gnits said:


> Run for a few months and progress from there


Gnits, it looks like AWS S3 Glacier has an option that allows you to do a local backup to a storage device and send it to Amazon. Here's the start of a link to Amazon Snowball Amazon Glacier Features – Amazon Web Services


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## Paul_DS256 (Apr 30, 2020)

Gnits said:


> Is there a plug-in for Lightroom which supports exporting or Publishing to S3 or S3 Glacier.


Gnits, I haven't seen one but would be interested. However, my backups are currently scheduled separately so run when LR isn't. Likely it would be nice to have a plug-in for something like Cloudberry to make it LR aware e.g. being able to backup a LR collection.

I did find a plug-in for Amazon Photo. See Photo Upload Amazon Drive


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## SaraLH (Apr 30, 2020)

I am a Prime member and use Amazon Photos for a once-a-month secondary backup of the raw files I've taken that month. I create a 2nd copy to my NAS on import and then once a month copy from the NAS to Amazon Drive. Although it's not automated, I set an Outlook reminder and it takes just a couple of minutes to initiate the process. One upload works well with up to about 500 photos. When I have more I split them into batches. 

And AFAIK there is not plugin that supports this process.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Apr 30, 2020)

Paul_DS256 said:


> I've never found there is a wait time Feguson. The few times I've needed to recover a document, I've used Cloudberry and it downloaded. No waiting. I went looking in the AWS S3 Glacier page and see where there 'can be' a delay but so far I have not encountered it.
> 
> For archive backups, where you will not touch a file unless there is an emergency, I've been very happy with S3 Glacier.


I used it for several years, and at the time there was a wait.  It was artificially imposed to distinguish their regular vs glacier offerings.  Cloudberry would implement it auto-magically (and I assume still will if needed). 

My guess is Amazon stopped imposing it to be more competitive but retained the "may".

I think the pricing has changed.  When I last looked (again, some years ago) B2 was cheaper than Glacier, it's now a tiny bit more expensive.   Those kind of price/feature battles are going on continually.


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## sylvie27 (May 1, 2020)

Thank you all for your input. 
As much as I like Amazon Photos, the fact that the photos don't get deleted after I delete them on my pc is a dealbreaker for me. 
I looked into AWS, but it seems quite complicated to set up. 
I think I will be going forward with Backblaze for $6/month.


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## Linwood Ferguson (May 1, 2020)

sylvie27 said:


> As much as I like Amazon Photos, the fact that the photos don't get deleted after I delete them on my pc is a dealbreaker for me.


Of course, if you are using the free (with prime) version, you aren't paying for those.   

I'm a fan of Backblaze (B2), their normal offering is pretty good also.   If you use offline drives (e.g. USB drives not connected all the time) be sure to carefully read their policy on them and when/if they are retained vs purged.


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