The second phase of backing up my photo archive was to find an online storage option. A bit of research narrowed the options to either BackBlaze or CrashPlan, and I ultimately opted for CrashPlan. For $70/year I can backup an unlimited amount of data, encrypted with my own personal key which never leaves my machine.

One downloaded and installed, I pointed it at my 220GB photo archive and let it loose… at which point the downsides to Australia’s ADSL network kicked in!

Living only approx. 300m from my local exchange, I have a pretty good ADSL line, connected at 20Mbps down, 1Mbps up. In practical terms, CrashPlan seems to max out at a sustained 850kbps, which means that, although I started the upload on Jan 11th, it’s still telling me I have 15 days to go!

I was away for a week at the Tour Down Under, but even still, this is what passes for excellent broadband in Australia and our current Govt. scrapped plans to build a Fibre-To-The-Premises network throughout the country, instead replacing it with Fibre-To-The-Node (where node is a cabinet at the end of your street), which will still rely on the existing crap copper infrastructure into the home.

Ah well, only 15 days or so to go!