Cloud or drive?

Learning goal

You will be able to compare the strengths and weaknesses of keeping your photo archive on drives at home and in cloud storage on the internet, and build a system that uses both together. You will weigh the speed and control of a local drive against the cloud's being somewhere else and reachable from anywhere; you will recognize the difference between spinning-platter drives and SSDs; you will calculate how long uploading an archive to the cloud will take, paying attention to the difference between bits and bytes; you will protect a cloud account with two-factor authentication; and you will notice that some services store photos compressed to save space, and make sure yours stores them at original quality. At the end of the module you will build and document your own archive and backup system.

The question

You are moving to another city, maybe another country, for a year. While packing your suitcase, you look at the two external drives on the desk: inside them are seven years of photos. If you put them in the suitcase, you also carry with you the risk of their being lost, dropped or stolen along with the suitcase; if you leave them at home, you can't reach your archive for a year. A friend says, "Just throw it all in the cloud." But the cloud has a monthly fee, you don't know how long the upload will take, and your photos will sit on the server of someone you've never met.

Where should you keep your photos? On a drive at home, in a cloud on the internet, or in both? In this lesson we will weigh what a drive and the cloud give and what they ask for, and then, as the module's last step, build your archive from start to finish with your own hands.

Context

In the previous lesson we saw that one of the backups needs to stay away from home; this lesson's question is where that somewhere else will be. In the past, the only way to do this was to leave a drive in the drawer of a relative or a workplace. Today, cloud services working over the internet make it possible to do the same job without leaving home.

But the cloud isn't magic that takes the place of the drive at home; it is another medium with its own strengths and weaknesses. That is why, in most cases, the healthiest answer to the question "cloud or drive?" is a system in which each covers the other's weakness: a drive for speed, the cloud for safety.

Simple explanation

What does a local drive give, and what doesn't it ask for?

A local drive is the drive inside your computer or connected to it with a cable. Its biggest strength is speed: opening a photo, scanning a folder or editing hundreds of RAWs happens without waiting on the internet's speed. It is bought once, has no monthly fee, and your files are fully under your control. Its weakness, on the other hand, is that it sits in the same place: a theft, a fire or a flood that affects the home affects the drive too, and like every drive it will fail one day.

Drives come in two main types. Spinning-platter drives work by the spinning of the magnetic platters inside them; large capacities are cheap, but they are sensitive to knocks and drops. An SSD, a solid-state drive, on the other hand, is a drive with no moving parts that works with flash memory; it is much faster and more resistant to knocks, but usually more expensive for the same capacity. Many photographers keep the current files they are working on on a fast SSD, and the whole archive on cheaper, large-capacity spinning-platter drives.

What does the cloud give, and what does it ask for?

Cloud storage is keeping files on a service's servers over the internet. Its biggest strength is that it is somewhere else by itself: whatever happens to the home, the cloud copy isn't affected. It can be reached from anywhere, and most services upload new files automatically. The price, on the other hand, is a monthly or yearly fee, depending on the internet's speed, and your archive sitting on a server you don't own. That is why reading the service's terms of use, and knowing what will happen if the account is closed or the service ends, matters.

The cloud account is the key to your archive. If your password is stolen, all your photos are stolen too, or can be deleted. Two-factor authentication greatly reduces this risk by asking, alongside the password, for a second check, such as a code sent to your phone. One more detail needs attention: some services, especially in free or cheap options, store photos compressed to save space. In the compressed copy of a portrait shot at night, the fine transitions in the shadow of the neck on dark skin can turn into blotches, and the pink transition on the cheek of light skin into a flat color. For an archive, you need to turn on the option to store at original quality.

How long does an upload take, and how do the two combine?

Internet speeds are usually measured in megabits per second, while file sizes are measured in megabytes or gigabytes; one byte is eight bits. On most home connections, the upload speed is noticeably lower than the download speed. A two-terabyte archive comes to about two million megabytes, that is, sixteen million megabits. At an upload speed of twenty megabits per second, this takes eight hundred thousand seconds, about nine days. The first upload is long; but after that only new photos are uploaded, and this takes much less time.

A system that combines the two options also lines up with the 3-2-1 rule: current files on the computer's fast drive, the whole archive on an external drive at home, and a copy in the cloud. The drive provides the speed of daily work and control over the files; the cloud provides the copy that sits somewhere else, against anything that could happen to the home. How much you pay for which depends on the size of your archive and your budget; but putting one in place of the other leaves both of their weaknesses exposed.

Visual evidence

Three weeks before moving, you do the math: your archive is one and a half terabytes, and your home connection's upload speed is twenty megabits per second. Twelve million megabits divided by twenty comes to six hundred thousand seconds, about a week. You open an account with a cloud service, enable two-factor authentication and start the upload; the computer runs at night for a week. You move this year's files to your laptop's SSD, leave the spinning-platter drive with the whole archive at your parents' home, and take a small external SSD with you for regular backups in your new home.

At the end of the first month in the new city, you download a folder back from the cloud to test it. From the cloud you download the folder of portraits you took one evening on the balcony with your neighbor. When you open the files you see a problem: their sizes are small, and on your neighbor's dark skin, in the shadow of their neck, there are blotches. The "save space" option in the cloud app on your phone had been left on; the copies uploaded from the phone were compressed. You switch the setting to original quality and upload that folder again from the RAWs on your computer. On the second download, your neighbor's skin, eyelashes and the light of the balcony lamp on their cheek come through complete.

Common mistakes

Summary

A local drive gives speed, a one-time cost and full control, but it sits in the same place and will fail one day; spinning-platter drives offer large capacity cheaply, while SSDs are fast and more resistant to knocks. Cloud storage sits somewhere else by itself and can be reached from anywhere, but asks for prices such as a monthly fee, slow uploads and someone else's server; protecting the account with two-factor authentication and choosing original quality make sure the archive, and the detail of faces of every skin tone, isn't lost to compression. The healthiest answer is both together: a drive for daily work, the cloud for the copy somewhere else.

Mini assignment

The module project is this assignment itself: build your own archive and backup system and share it with screenshots.

1. Find out the total size of your archive and your home connection's upload speed; calculate how long the first cloud upload will take, paying attention to the difference between bits and bytes.
2. Set up your photo folders according to a date-based system and name the files with a consistent pattern.
3. Set up a system that follows the 3-2-1 rule: current files, an external drive at home, and a copy somewhere else, a drive or the cloud; if you use the cloud, turn on two-factor authentication and choose original quality.
4. Test it by restoring a folder from the backup; take screenshots of your folder structure, your backup settings and the restore result, and share them.

Check yourself

• Does your archive have three copies, on two different media, with one somewhere else?
• Are the photos you uploaded to the cloud stored at original quality?
• Are the shadows and fine transitions of portraits you downloaded back from the cloud the same as in the original file, on every skin, light or dark?

Glossary

Mini quiz

1. What is a local drive's clearest advantage over the cloud?

• A) That it is somewhere else by itself
• B) Speed and full control over the files
• C) That it never fails
• D) That it can be reached from anywhere

2. About how long do two terabytes take at an upload speed of twenty megabits per second?

• A) About nine days
• B) An hour
• C) A day
• D) A year

3. Which is the most effective way to protect a cloud account?

• A) Choosing a short password
• B) Using the same password everywhere
• C) Never opening the account
• D) Enabling two-factor authentication

4. In a night portrait you downloaded from the cloud, you see blotches in the shadow of a dark-skinned person's neck. What is the most likely cause?

• A) The lens was dirty
• B) The camera's clock was wrong
• C) The service or app stored the file compressed to save space
• D) The card's speed class was low

Answers

1. B — A local drive doesn't wait on the internet's speed, and the files are fully under your control.
2. A — Two terabytes is about sixteen million megabits; divided by twenty, this comes to eight hundred thousand seconds, about nine days.
3. D — Two-factor authentication makes getting into the account hard even if the password is stolen.
4. C — In compressed copies the fine transitions in dark shadows turn into blotches; the original quality option prevents this.

Summary card

• Drive: fast, under your control, paid for once; but in the same place, and it will fail one day.
• Spinning-platter drive: big and cheap; SSD: fast and durable.
• Cloud: somewhere else, from anywhere; but paid, slow uploads, someone else's server.
• One byte is eight bits; upload time = megabits ÷ speed.
• Two-factor authentication and original quality; best of all, both together.

Bridge to the next lesson

Your archive is now orderly, named and in three copies; when you look inside, you see what it keeps most: people. Your neighbor's portrait on the balcony, a friend's laugh, an old person's hands. Even if you shot them all technically right, some portraits look alive and some lifeless. Why is photographing people so hard, and at the same time so rewarding? The next lesson opens the introduction to genres module with the portrait, and talks about how a good portrait starts with building a connection before settings.