Downfall: The Loss of an Image Host.

[Trekker4747]

My image host has been down for the better part of the week and shows little to no sign of returning. Gone with it goes years of collected images, thread bombs, GIFs and so much more.

Damn.

Now I need to find a new image host. Yeah, that whole idea companies keep tossing around about computers someday not needing hard-drives or storage systems and everything being on-line in the "cloud" including your video collection sounds great.

 

[MadMan1701A]

That sucks.

That's an issue we talk about at work, often... Everyone is so sure it's going to happen. I make the joke that I'll be the last guy in town, with a stack of Terabyte hard drives covered in tin foil.

 

[sojourner]

They can have my storage media when they pry it from my cold dead hands.

 

[Amaris]

My image host has been down for the better part of the week and shows little to no sign of returning. Gone with it goes years of collected images, thread bombs, GIFs and so much more.

Damn.

Now I need to find a new image host. Yeah, that whole idea companies keep tossing around about computers someday not needing hard-drives or storage systems and everything being on-line in the "cloud" including your video collection sounds great.

PhotoBucket's always worked for me.

 

[Unicron]

Me too. It's been pretty reliable for the most part.

 

[Trekker4747]

Village Photos has been reliable for me too for the better part of the last 10 years but then.... kaput.

 

[SeerSGB]

That sucks.

That's an issue we talk about at work, often... Everyone is so sure it's going to happen. I make the joke that I'll be the last guy in town, with a stack of Terabyte hard drives covered in tin foil.

I'll be hoarding storage media like a some people hoard food for a nuclear attack. I hate the ideal of "Cloud computing" and have little interest in using it.

 

[Australis]

Hmm, that's interesting. I toothink cloud computing is sucky and want my stuff in my hands, not someoen else's.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, I agree, Trekker. It's a concern I've had for many years. I don't think we should put so much reliance on cloud computing. While it is a neat idea and certainly has its benefits, it does entirely rely on someone else to provide service. Service that may have the plug pulled at any moment in time. To me, that's just too risky, especially if we're relying on said service to store some valuables.

 

[WillsBabe]

I don't think you can be too sure when it comes to storage. At the moment I have my images stored on 2 external hds, laptop, pc and photobucket. It seems overkill but they could easily be wiped out. This thread reminds me that I do need to do a back up. Hope you get your stuff back, Trekker, I feel for you.

 

[Captain Ice]

You can have my external drives when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I pay for a VPS and make frequent backups, and I own my own domain(s), so if I can't keep my online image cache going that's my own fault.

 

[Trekker4747]

Well, "fortunately" there wasn't exactly much there that's irreplaceable or exactly of any importance. It was just a load of thread bombs and other images used for posting in message boards. There were no personal images or anything there, it's still frustrating to have lost it as it was a pay site and, well, the convenience of it. Hopefully they're just having server issues and it'll be cleared up at some point, if nothing has changed in a couple of weeks I'll probably get an account at Photobucket or some other host.

 

[Holdfast]

I can see why you're a bit cheesed off. Having said that, since Imageshack started being rather annoying for various reasons, I switched to Imgur. Imgur has only a limited number of free photo slots (a couple of hundred or so IIRC). So every now and then I delete photos I'm not using. 6+ months later, I still haven't gone over about 150 I think. I had 1000s of images on Imageshack I think at one point. So if you're anything like me, there would have been a lot of digital junk in those photos you lost that you'll likely never have used again anyway. That makes it a little better.

Regarding hte wider issue of cloud storage, I think many people will still like to keep some kind of short/medium-term back-up physical storage medium (like flash drive or similar). What will change is the ability to access that data from a variety of thinner/lighter/cheaper/less power-consumptive terminals via cloud servers. It's already trending in that direction and on balance I think it will be a good thing. Just keep a synchronised backup somewhere yourself in addition as an insurance policy.

 

[RJDiogenes]

This almost happened to me a few years ago when AOL suddenly decided to stop providing storage space. Luckily, I had enough time to download everything. Now I keep a backup folder of everything I upload (of course, most of what I upload is an edited version of something else that I already have a couple of backups of anyway).

 

[Hoser]

Back in the day, I stored photos on a Yahoo site run by my ISP. When I had to switch ISP's after a move, I lost every one of those photos.
Never again, it's all external drives for me now.

 

[Trekker4747]

I can see why you're a bit cheesed off. Having said that, since Imageshack started being rather annoying for various reasons, I switched to Imgur. Imgur has only a limited number of free photo slots (a couple of hundred or so IIRC). So every now and then I delete photos I'm not using. 6+ months later, I still haven't gone over about 150 I think. I had 1000s of images on Imageshack I think at one point. So if you're anything like me, there would have been a lot of digital junk in those photos you lost that you'll likely never have used again anyway. That makes it a little better.

Regarding hte wider issue of cloud storage, I think many people will still like to keep some kind of short/medium-term back-up physical storage medium (like flash drive or similar). What will change is the ability to access that data from a variety of thinner/lighter/cheaper/less power-consumptive terminals via cloud servers. It's already trending in that direction and on balance I think it will be a good thing. Just keep a synchronised backup somewhere yourself in addition as an insurance policy.

There's a certain "appeal" to cloud storage, like the iPhone commercial that shows taking a picture and it instantly also appearing on a desktop, pad, and other devices you use. But I'm sure that can all be done with the picture being stored on a fixed, physical, device you own and control.

But, the idea of "cloud computing" has been around for a long time, I remember back in 1999 reading something that said it'd be in the next version of Windows or at least in the future where you wouldn't have a computer with a hard-drive and everyone pretty much would be operating dumb terminals on a greater, world-wide, network.

Again, such an idea is sort of scary to think of because at the very least it'd mean having to have a constant stream of money going to some entity to ensure the existence of your files otherwise poof! I've got three old hard-drives sitting in my closet that I can grab at any time to get files off of should I want them (though none have anything important on them.) It's even scarier to think that this is how some want media to go. I've got a large DVD collection, something I will always have and never lose.

I dissolved my Netflix account a little while ago and was told that if I was gone longer than a couple of months any favorites or "subscriptions" to shows I had would be erased; so if I went back to Netflix I'd have to pretty much start over. No loss for me, I didn't use it much anyway. But if a constant stream of money was needed for me to retain a movie collection? Oy!

As has been said, they can pry the DVDs out of my cold, dead, hands.

 

[Kestra]

If something's that important, then of course you should keep backups and keep them current to ever hanging technology. For myself, as much as I enjoy some photos, I don't think I'd be devastated if I lost all of mine. I try to just not get so attached to media.

 

[Candlelight]

I use photobucket for silly photoshop this type storage but nothing crucial goes up there.

I am using SkyDrive as an online storage depot for a lot of my stuff, but I have duplicates on (at least) two external hard drives and two computers should anything happen. Plus the odd photo self-sent to my Gmail account, not to mention those I've actually cared to share on Facebook.

I like redundancy.