The 2+ terabyte Question

[bl8ter]

I am currently considering joining smugmug, but have a serious problem. Over the last 2 years I have amassed 2484.98 GIGS (yes that is 2+ terabytes) which is stored over way to many dvds. Now if my calculations are correct it would take me 103360 hours, 12 minutes and 4 seconds under optimal connections to load my albums. I have a cable connection with a 60Kb upload rate.

Reading the smugmug faq is states that DVD's can be purchased for $22 bucks plus 10 dollars per gig (or something like that), but never talks about having your DVDs restored. So my first questions is does this type of service exist?

Secondly I have full access to a full DS3 connection (90+ megs/sec) which I could use to upload, But i'm sure smugmug has bandwidth throttling. So my second is question is what are the connections throttled at?

While I realize this is an extreme situation I'm sure as more people embrace digital photography the problem is only going to get worse. To make matters even worse I problably create on average 1 - 2 gigs a week.

Can Smugmug deliver a solution to address my need?

[Mike Lane]

I am currently considering joining smugmug, but have a serious problem. Over the last 2 years I have amassed 2484.98 GIGS (yes that is 2+ terabytes) which is stored over way to many dvds. Now if my calculations are correct it would take me 103360 hours, 12 minutes and 4 seconds under optimal connections to load my albums. I have a cable connection with a 60Kb upload rate.

Wowza! You're a prolific shooter...

Reading the smugmug faq is states that DVD's can be purchased for $22 bucks plus 10 dollars per gig (or something like that), but never talks about having your DVDs restored. So my first questions is does this type of service exist?

DVD's restored? You mean having smugmug send you your 2.48498 Tb of pics on DVDs just as you have them right now if something happens to them? I doubt it, but I don't know for certain.

Secondly I have full access to a full DS3 connection (90+ megs/sec) which I could use to upload, But i'm sure smugmug has bandwidth throttling. So my second is question is what are the connections throttled at?

From some of the posting from Don and Chris, I'm pretty sure that smugmug doesn't have bandwidth throttling. I could very well be wrong but they have talked about users that take advantage of massive bandwidth at the office.

While I realize this is an extreme situation I'm sure as more people embrace digital photography the problem is only going to get worse. To make matters even worse I problably create on average 1 - 2 gigs a week.

Probably won't be an issue as stated above

Can Smugmug deliver a solution to address my need?

Sounds like they can to me :wink

[jfriend]

I am currently considering joining smugmug, but have a serious problem. Over the last 2 years I have amassed 2484.98 GIGS (yes that is 2+ terabytes) which is stored over way to many dvds. Now if my calculations are correct it would take me 103360 hours, 12 minutes and 4 seconds under optimal connections to load my albums. I have a cable connection with a 60Kb upload rate.

Reading the smugmug faq is states that DVD's can be purchased for $22 bucks plus 10 dollars per gig (or something like that), but never talks about having your DVDs restored. So my first questions is does this type of service exist?

Secondly I have full access to a full DS3 connection (90+ megs/sec) which I could use to upload, But i'm sure smugmug has bandwidth throttling. So my second is question is what are the connections throttled at?

While I realize this is an extreme situation I'm sure as more people embrace digital photography the problem is only going to get worse. To make matters even worse I problably create on average 1 - 2 gigs a week.

Can Smugmug deliver a solution to address my need?

I have, in the past, uploaded 1000 images at a time from a T1 connection and the uploads go extremely fast so I don't think smugmug was throttling anything on their end at the time. Why don't you just sign-up with the free trial account and try it out. I used StarExplorer to do my uploads. It let's me set up a whole hieararchy of galleries and uploads ahead of time and then just do all the uploads in one unattended session.

[bl8ter]

DVD's restored? You mean having smugmug send you your 2.48498 Tb of pics on DVDs just as you have them right now if something happens to them? I doubt it, but I don't know for certain.


LOL... No I will send them MY stacks of DVDs and they can restore them to my account.... This would be a great service....

[Mike Lane]

LOL... No I will send them MY stacks of DVDs and they can restore them to my account.... This would be a great service....

:lol3 You can send them electronically :thumb

[bl8ter]

I have, in the past, uploaded 1000 images at a time from a T1 connection and the uploads go extremely fast so I don't think smugmug was throttling anything on their end at the time. Why don't you just sign-up with the free trial account and try it out. I used StarExplorer to do my uploads. It let's me set up a whole hieararchy of galleries and uploads ahead of time and then just do all the uploads in one unattended session.

yeah I will sign up for the trial and see if I can move 2 tera bytes in 7 days... I will report back the results. StarExplorer looks nice, but I only use Linux... I will have to find something else...

Thanks for your help.

[Mac Write]

This will be very entertaining. Can't wait to see the servers croak under the load and Smugmug having to buy an XRaid fully loaded just for your site LOL.

[marlinspike]

Have you ever thought about saving them as quality 10 jpgs? Over that many files that would save a lot of space.

[Andy]

Can Smugmug deliver a solution to address my need?

Hi bl8ter, welcome to Dgrin and SmugMug.

These help pages might be of use to you.

http://www.smugmug.com/help/faqgen
http://www.smugmug.com/help/photo-storage

Backups are for us to create copies of what you have stored:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/backups

We don't have a service where you can send us your dvds, sorry about that.

All the best,

[bl8ter]

Hi bl8ter, welcome to Dgrin and SmugMug.

These help pages might be of use to you.

http://www.smugmug.com/help/faqgen
http://www.smugmug.com/help/photo-storage

Backups are for us to create copies of what you have stored:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/backups

We don't have a service where you can send us your dvds, sorry about that.

All the best,

I read the http://www.smugmug.com/help/faqgen and it specifies 24gig yearly limit( or 2gigs per month) of bandwidth. Is this only for viewing? or does this include the uploading of pictures also.

Thanks.

[Andy]

I read the http://www.smugmug.com/help/faqgen and it specifies 24gig yearly limit( or 2gigs per month) of bandwidth. Is this only for viewing? or does this include the uploading of pictures also.

Thanks.

Bandwidth is serving up your images to your viewers. 4gb for standard accounts, 8gb for Power users, 16gb for Pros. Does not include uploading or any html served up by SmugMug to your viewers.

[DavidTO]

Secondly I have full access to a full DS3 connection (90+ megs/sec) which I could use to upload, But i'm sure smugmug has bandwidth throttling. So my second is question is what are the connections throttled at?



Sounds like if they don't already they better do it soon!

[bl8ter]

Bandwidth is serving up your images to your viewers. 4gb for standard accounts, 8gb for Power users, 16gb for Pros. Does not include uploading or any html served up by SmugMug to your viewers.

Great.... I am signing up today... Thanks for all your help!

[onethumb]

I am currently considering joining smugmug, but have a serious problem. Over the last 2 years I have amassed 2484.98 GIGS (yes that is 2+ terabytes) which is stored over way to many dvds. Now if my calculations are correct it would take me 103360 hours, 12 minutes and 4 seconds under optimal connections to load my albums. I have a cable connection with a 60Kb upload rate.

Are these JPEGs? Or BMP/PSD/TIFF/RAW? Smugmug doesn't accept anything but JPEGs, GIFs, or PNGs. If they *are* JPEGs, you're the most prolific shooter we've ever met (and I thought we'd met them all!).

If you don't mind my asking, what resolution are they and what compression settings did you use?


Reading the smugmug faq is states that DVD's can be purchased for $22 bucks plus 10 dollars per gig (or something like that), but never talks about having your DVDs restored. So my first questions is does this type of service exist?

We don't do this, but I've heard of a few other people offering this service. In fact, I think Nikolai does. He's on this forum, you might ask him.


Secondly I have full access to a full DS3 connection (90+ megs/sec) which I could use to upload, But i'm sure smugmug has bandwidth throttling. So my second is question is what are the connections throttled at?

A DS3 is actually 45 MegaBits per second, or 5.6 megs per second. We can handle that without impacting other customers, I think. There is no throttling, though you may be the straw that changes our policy. :) Your best bet to get full bandwidth is to upload early morning (midnight - 5am PST).

While I realize this is an extreme situation I'm sure as more people embrace digital photography the problem is only going to get worse. To make matters even worse I problably create on average 1 - 2 gigs a week.

Can Smugmug deliver a solution to address my need?

Once we understand your needs a little better (# of photos, format, compression level, resolution), I'm hoping we can deliver a solution for you. But I really don't know.

Ideally, we'd at least need a few weeks warning before you shoved all the photos at us so we can make sure our available storage matches. :)

Anyway, let's keep talking and see what we can do. I'm intriguiged by your prolific shooting capacity. :)

Thanks!

Don

[bl8ter]

Are these JPEGs? Or BMP/PSD/TIFF/RAW? Smugmug doesn't accept anything but JPEGs, GIFs, or PNGs. If they *are* JPEGs, you're the most prolific shooter we've ever met (and I thought we'd met them all!).

If you don't mind my asking, what resolution are they and what compression settings did you use?

They are all JPEGS and are about 6.2 megs each(8MP, 3423 x 2400). I keep them this size because I like to make poster size prints. Like 36x24, etc...




A DS3 is actually 45 MegaBits per second, or 5.6 megs per second. We can handle that without impacting other customers, I think. There is no throttling, though you may be the straw that changes our policy. :) Your best bet to get full bandwidth is to upload early morning (midnight - 5am PST).


Its dual DS3's... Load balanced. And since its a holiday week its wide open.



Once we understand your needs a little better (# of photos, format, compression level, resolution), I'm hoping we can deliver a solution for you. But I really don't know.

Ideally, we'd at least need a few weeks warning before you shoved all the photos at us so we can make sure our available storage matches. :)

Anyway, let's keep talking and see what we can do. I'm intriguiged by your prolific shooting capacity. :)

Thanks!

Don
I travel internationally a lot for my work so I end up taking lots of pictures. On average I am only home only 4 days a month. I normally take a 300gig usb harddrive with me.. I also keep the .RAW images but those i will not upload. I keep those for when I do any editing. The 2+ terabytes are just the JPEGS.

[onethumb]

They are all JPEGS and are about 6.2 megs each(8MP, 3423 x 2400). I keep them this size because I like to make poster size prints. Like 36x24, etc...



Its dual DS3's... Load balanced. And since its a holiday week its wide open.


I travel internationally a lot for my work so I end up taking lots of pictures. On average I am only home only 4 days a month. I normally take a 300gig usb harddrive with me.. I also keep the .RAW images but those i will not upload. I keep those for when I do any editing. The 2+ terabytes are just the JPEGS.

Wow, that must be close to 500,000 JPEGs! Quite a collection - I can't wait to see them. :)

So we've always said "unlimited storage" and we mean what we say. We're happy to take your photos and host them, but we need a little time to prepare.

Just so you know, this is something like a $20,000 first-year commitment for us in terms of disk space, power, cooling, and physical space. You'll basically have two complete RAID arrays to yourself in our datacenter. Of course, you'll only pay your $30, $50, or $100 per year, depending on your account level. Again, we're happy to do it - but I want to be up front here and let you know that we need to order some equipment and get it installed to accept your photos. We're not geared for accepting 2.5TB overnight. :)

We'll also be buying extra image processing machines just for your batch of photos. Luckily, once yours are done, everyone else at smugmug will get to benefit from them, so I don't consider that a cost to host you.

Does that sound fair? Can we ask you to hold off while we order and install the equipment and power required?

Thanks!

Don

[Mac Write]

Man this is so exciting!!! You have to use him for your ads and other things to promote smugmug. BTW Are you the buy who takes tons and tons of photos of your dog from DPReview? I think he is going to need a custom bandwidth plan and will help shape smugmug for the next 5 years with all the suggestions he will have.

Don you have to post photos of the RAID's arriving, being taken out of the box, being setup and installed (without compermisiing security). I see this as a big way to help promote smugmug. If this works out, I think he will personally bring in 1,000+ customers. Think of the ads "Smugmug is truly unlimited. I host over 500,000 photos at over 2.5TeraBytes."

Man I can't wait to see how this plays out Drool.

[Mike Lane]

Does that sound fair? Can we ask you to hold off while we order and install the equipment and power required?

Thanks!

Don

Holy crap you guys rule... :clap

[bwg]

Holy crap you guys rule... :clap

seriously.

i want to go get some popcorn and see how this thread plays out!

[marlinspike]

While I'm going to hate while he's uploading I'm going to love when he's done.

[bl8ter]

Wow, that must be close to 500,000 JPEGs! Quite a collection - I can't wait to see them. :)

So we've always said "unlimited storage" and we mean what we say. We're happy to take your photos and host them, but we need a little time to prepare.

Just so you know, this is something like a $20,000 first-year commitment for us in terms of disk space, power, cooling, and physical space. You'll basically have two complete RAID arrays to yourself in our datacenter. Of course, you'll only pay your $30, $50, or $100 per year, depending on your account level. Again, we're happy to do it - but I want to be up front here and let you know that we need to order some equipment and get it installed to accept your photos. We're not geared for accepting 2.5TB overnight. :)

We'll also be buying extra image processing machines just for your batch of photos. Luckily, once yours are done, everyone else at smugmug will get to benefit from them, so I don't consider that a cost to host you.

Does that sound fair? Can we ask you to hold off while we order and install the equipment and power required?

Thanks!

Don

This sounds very fair... Just so were on the same page I will not be able to upload 2.4 terabytes in one session. I only have 200gigs on my computer and a 300gb usb drive. Some 90 percent of my images are on DVDs will need to be restored to my machine for uploading. Its also going to take me some time to put these in albums and properly tag them. If I remember correctly the java uploader will only send 100megs at a time, and im not going to sit in front of my computer for 7 days straight uploading them all at once. I travel quite a bit and this will done over the next few months.

My goal of asking this question was to find out if I could host my entire collection in an online service that would free me from storing all these images. Secondly since I travel a lot it would be nice to be able the upload the pictures almost real time and not have to mess around with transfering them and backing them up. On top of that my family and friends all want to see them so I end up shrinking them for emailing them or burning dvds for them. This takes way to much time.... Plus I like the idea of sharing photos with people who are also into photography. The concept of having a google of images from around the globe is very inspiring.

Given that I had some time off for the holidays I decided to investigate these services to find out if they would address my needs. The feedback from this thread tells me that it is entirely possible and will make my photography alot less time intensive and much more enjoyable.

I would like to thank everyone for their feedback!:clap

[bl8ter]

BTW Are you the buy who takes tons and tons of photos of your dog from DPReview?


900gigs are pictures of just ants using a macro lense.. :rofl

Actually only about 300 gigs is family related photos. Most of my images are of architecture, landscapes, cities, machines and people from all over the world.

[jfriend]

If I remember correctly the java uploader will only send 100megs at a time, and im not going to sit in front of my computer for 7 days straight uploading them all at once. I travel quite a bit and this will done over the next few months.

If you are going to be uploading that much, I would highly recommend one of the 3rd party uploaders. I use StarExplorer (http://www.starexplorer.com/) and I switched to it because I could organize images into albums on my PC and then upload GB's at a time across many albums, all unattended. No 100MB limit per session.

[Mac Write]

Wish StarExplorer was out for Mac. But there isn't. If I use iPhoto I can upload multiple albums as once, but since I don't use it (I use Aperture now) I don't have that luxury. Hopefully Smugmug uploader 2 for OS X will offer Aperture Albums uploading.

[onethumb]

If you are going to be uploading that much, I would highly recommend one of the 3rd party uploaders. I use StarExplorer (http://www.starexplorer.com/) and I switched to it because I could organize images into albums on my PC and then upload GB's at a time across many albums, all unattended. No 100MB limit per session.

I would definitely either use the built-in BETA uploader or something like Send-To-Smugmug or Star*Explorer. They're more efficient at uploading, don't have any batch size limits, and also allow my image processing cluster to attack each photo as it arrives, rather than once the entire batch is complete.

Don

[onethumb]

This sounds very fair... Just so were on the same page I will not be able to upload 2.4 terabytes in one session. I only have 200gigs on my computer and a 300gb usb drive. Some 90 percent of my images are on DVDs will need to be restored to my machine for uploading. Its also going to take me some time to put these in albums and properly tag them. If I remember correctly the java uploader will only send 100megs at a time, and im not going to sit in front of my computer for 7 days straight uploading them all at once. I travel quite a bit and this will done over the next few months.

My goal of asking this question was to find out if I could host my entire collection in an online service that would free me from storing all these images. Secondly since I travel a lot it would be nice to be able the upload the pictures almost real time and not have to mess around with transfering them and backing them up. On top of that my family and friends all want to see them so I end up shrinking them for emailing them or burning dvds for them. This takes way to much time.... Plus I like the idea of sharing photos with people who are also into photography. The concept of having a google of images from around the globe is very inspiring.

Given that I had some time off for the holidays I decided to investigate these services to find out if they would address my needs. The feedback from this thread tells me that it is entirely possible and will make my photography alot less time intensive and much more enjoyable.

I would like to thank everyone for their feedback!:clap

Great! We've already started the wheels turning to get some more hardware, so I'll keep everyone posted as to how that's going. (Actually, Andrew probably will :).

Don

[Wireless]

Great! We've already started the wheels turning to get some more hardware, so I'll keep everyone posted as to how that's going. (Actually, Andrew probably will :).

Don

So much for slacking off at the new job... ;)

[Andy]

So much for slacking off at the new job... ;)

:lol3

[Mike Lane]

Great! We've already started the wheels turning to get some more hardware, so I'll keep everyone posted as to how that's going. (Actually, Andrew probably will :).

Don

Merry Christmas to Apple (http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid/) huh? :wink

[Mac Write]

Oh ya :D:D:D:D I hope those are hooked up to XServes. Man we really need to see the plans for the data center - while not breeching security.

You take his word he is real and spend $20,000 WOW. Me personally I want to have 10,000+ photos on-line come end of Q1 06. and double that by end of 2006.

[flyingdutchie]

About 500.000 JPEGs.... WOW!!!
mmmmmm i did some math:

Say you shot them all in the last 10 years.
That is 50.000 per year.
That is 136 (and some change) per day, every day!!!!
If a day is 8 hours (work day), that would be around 17 per hour and that is about one picture per 3 and a half minute!

Those numbers are staggering!!! :rofl

[Mike Lane]

Oh ya :D:D:D:D I hope those are hooked up to XServes. Man we really need to see the plans for the data center - while not breeching security.

You take his word he is real and spend $20,000 WOW. Me personally I want to have 10,000+ photos on-line come end of Q1 06. and double that by end of 2006.

If I ever have 10,000 shots that are good enough to put on smugmug I'll be surprised. :uhoh

[ankit]

I have been trying to decide between smugmug, flickr and pbase over the past few weeks, and this thread basically sealed my decision. While I'll never have anywhere near a terabyte of images, I am sure that if I am to have any problems they will be handled effectively! :thumb

Also posted about it on my blog at http://lucis.net.

[sludge01]

I posted about this in my blog at http://www.downwithtables.org because it's just too good NOT to mention. Hopefully I'll turn at least one more photographer on to you guys.

SmugMug rocks!

[Sheaf]

To satisfy my curiousity Bl8ter, could you provide a link to one of your typical photos in original size?

[Andy]

To satisfy my curiousity Bl8ter, could you provide a link to one of your typical photos in original size?

:wave Welcome to Dgrin, Sheaf :wink

[Sheaf]

:wave Welcome to Dgrin, Sheaf :wink

Nothing like a number-filled thread to bring me out to make my first post.

My lurking days are over, I guess.

[crayiii]

You must do some serious bracketing!!!!!!

[felixb]

Im more worried by this thread than impressed.

With what I am hearing how on earth can you have a business model that is profitable with spending 20k on one user?

It worries me that the plans are unlimited, because this leaves you, the company, open for abuse! I would prefer limited plans that meant I could rely on smugmug to not get swamped by people abusing the service and be around for the years to come.

Dont you agree?

[jfriend]

Im more worried by this thread than impressed.

With what I am hearing how on earth can you have a business model that is profitable with spending 20k on one user?

It worries me that the plans are unlimited, because this leaves you, the company, open for abuse! I would prefer limited plans that meant I could rely on smugmug to not get swamped by people abusing the service and be around for the years to come.

Dont you agree?

This is a simple (and relatively common) business proposition. Smugmug uses the "unlimited storage" to attract customers and relies on a law of averages across a large number of users such that the average storage use per user is fairly predicatable even if a few users go nuts. They also know that it would likely take a long, long time for this user to actually upload that many images which means it's a pretty big time committment on the user's end which further limits how many people will actually do this. As their subscriber numbers get larger, the average will be dictated more by what their middle class of user uses than it will be what the extreme users use.

It's related to the business logic that cell phone companies offering unlimited cellular plans use. If everyone who has an unlimited plan took maximum advantage of those plans, the cell phone companies wouldn't have enough capacity to meet the demand, but they rely on the law of averages and their experience to date to predict an average usage and price that plan at a point that still makes business sense to them.

[Mac Write]

Smugmug is genuinely Unlimited upload and space. Think about it. Someone with 30,000 photos, 500,000 photos is going to use lots of bandwidth and that is where Smugmug will make their money along with photo sales.

[dominik]

o.O

I thought my ~20,000 photos (~0.3 tb) over the past 5 years were a lot :p

I'm really impressed by the smugmug response to this thread. So different from the other 'commericalized' services (who don't even have forums like this!), smugmug feels a lot more like a professional photographer's resource.

[JimM]

Has this started yet? I am very curious to what all these pictures are of? Is this guy a photographer for a living?

[Cindy]

:clap WOW... this is awesome! Smugmug you R so cool! :clap
This is going to be exciting just watching how it plays out.
Ahhhhh.... Smugmug I hope somehow all our sites are protected while he's uploading :rofl please don't let him break our sites... oh yeah... forgot to ask this won't raise our prices will it??? :huh

Cindy

[asd]

This is one of the coolest threads I've read on here. As I approach my one year mark (~9 days until renewal :D) with smugmug, I'm happier than ever - this place rocks!

And..yeah..I'd love to see some of bl8ter's work once he starts uploading.

[infinityplusone]

Found the forum, and this thread from the below links...

http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/2087/the_recherche_of

http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/index.php?action=expand,9710


It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Good karma to the owner for doing what you advertise. :):

Any updates?

[SamirD]

Holy cow.:jawdrop :oogle :jawdrop :oogle I thought I had a lot of photos to upload when I signed up about 2 weeks ago. I took me a little over a week to upload over 70,000 pictures (50gb) via a couple of cable modems.

This guy has been shooting like I do on the weekends. 500,000 / (365 *2) = almost 700 a day! If he's working 8 hrs a day, that's one shot every 42 seconds!!

The best I ever did was 1400 something shots in 20 hours. And that's only one shot every 51 seconds!! And I was dead after that! Well, not completely because I woke up 4 hours later and shot another thousand. :huh

This has me wondering now--how many large archives are here on smugmug? So I guess it's time for a new thread, "How much storage do you use on smugmug?" (http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=27509)

[JimM]

Did this ever take place?

[onethumb]

Did this ever take place?

We're getting close. The new image processing servers are in place ($20K worth), and the new storage ($25K worth) was being installed last night. We also upgraded our bandwidth a couple of huge notches (can you says Gigabit Ethernet?) last night. Once I hear from Wireless how that went, we may be ready to go. I'd guess maybe a week or two more, tops.

We're excited to see all these photos - sounds like quite a collection!

More as I get it. :)

Don

[dragon300zx]

(can you says Gigabit Ethernet?)

Don

Tsk Tsk Tsk. Don thats old school. Been running a true 100% gigabit ethernet here for awhile. It's alot of fun for file transporting. But even quickbooks can make it seem slow :uhoh:rolleyes.

Anyways, I have to say the level of customer support, and dedication to keeping your customers happy still amazes me. :thumb

[jfriend]

Tsk Tsk Tsk. Don thats old school. Been running a true 100% gigabit ethernet here for awhile. It's alot of fun for file transporting. But even quickbooks can make it seem slow.

Yeah, but do you have a Gigabit Ethernet connection to the Internet? Presumably, that's what Don is talking about.

--John

[JimM]

Doesn't look like we have heard from bl8ter (http://www.dgrin.com/member.php?u=5593) lately... is he still around??? Hate for all of this extra capacity just to be there for our use :wink

[dragon300zx]

Yeah, but do you have a Gigabit Ethernet connection to the Internet? Presumably, that's what Don is talking about.

--John
Ahh maybe But if they do have a GigE connection (and people complain about the cost of dsl:rolleyes) then all I can say is, I am willing to move if another network/admin geek is needed.

[dragon300zx]

Doesn't look like we have heard from bl8ter (http://www.dgrin.com/member.php?u=5593) lately... is he still around??? Hate for all of this extra capacity just to be there for our use :wink

Guess we will just have to step up to the challenge.

[onethumb]

Tsk Tsk Tsk. Don thats old school. Been running a true 100% gigabit ethernet here for awhile. It's alot of fun for file transporting. But even quickbooks can make it seem slow :uhoh:rolleyes.

Anyways, I have to say the level of customer support, and dedication to keeping your customers happy still amazes me. :thumb

SmugMug was built on GigE internally... but we're new to the "GigE between datacenters and providers" club. :)

You're a lucky duck if you've got GigE to some provider. Kudos!

Don

[dragon300zx]

SmugMug was built on GigE internally... but we're new to the "GigE between datacenters and providers" club. :)

You're a lucky duck if you've got GigE to some provider. Kudos!

Don

No, :uhoh you said gigabit ethernet so I thought originally you were finally upgrading from 10/100 internally. Then figured out you ment a GigE internet connection.

[cmason]

Just read the whole thread....

It seems amazing enough that someone can shoot or even have that many photos, but what really shocks me is having that many photos worth keeping, especially so much so that you will spend likely days if not weeks simply uploading them, never mind viewing them, cataloging, adding captions, etc.

I have thousands of photos, but only a small % are worth keeping, never mind sharing or taking up HD space...

[onethumb]

No, :uhoh you said gigabit ethernet so I thought originally you were finally upgrading from 10/100 internally. Then figured out you ment a GigE internet connection.

Not only do we have some new GigE links, we have some new toys that're capable of 10GigE. Mmmmm.

Don

[bwg]

Doesn't look like we have heard from bl8ter (http://www.dgrin.com/member.php?u=5593) lately... is he still around??? Hate for all of this extra capacity just to be there for our use :wink
i'm with you jim. my bs-sense has been tingling for a little while now. I suppose he could be communicating exclusively with SM offline, but i just dont see how someone could shoot that type of volume and have that many keeper photos.

i hope this is for real....i'd love to see 900gig of the best ant macro photos i've ever seen.

[bl8ter]

i'm with you jim. my bs-sense has been tingling for a little while now. I suppose he could be communicating exclusively with SM offline, but i just dont see how someone could shoot that type of volume and have that many keeper photos.

i hope this is for real....i'd love to see 900gig of the best ant macro photos i've ever seen.

Let me set the record straight.... I travel 90 percent of the time for my job, which often takes me to remote regions of the globe. This collection has been buildt over long period of time. Just last week I spent 15 days in Kenya and amassed 16 gigs of raw pictures which when translated to jpeg equals about 7gig. I shot over 1200 photos.

While I can't say every photo is award winning. I can claim that anyone who has never been to any of these remote locations would definitly feel they had been there after viewing my photos.

Given that I travel atlot, when I am at home I spend my time with my family. So computers and photography come after. Which doesn't leave much time.

As far as a status update I am currently in the process of restoring and organizing my photos for transfer. Since I have limited time at home its going slower then I had expected.

[bwg]

Let me set the record straight.... I travel 90 percent of the time for my job, which often takes me to remote regions of the globe. This collection has been buildt over long period of time. Just last week I spent 15 days in Kenya and amassed 16 gigs of raw pictures which when translated to jpeg equals about 7gig. I shot over 1200 photos.

While I can't say every photo is award winning. I can claim that anyone who has never been to any of these remote locations would definitly feel they had been there after viewing my photos.

Given that I travel atlot, when I am at home I spend my time with my family. So computers and photography come after. Which doesn't leave much time.

As far as a status update I am currently in the process of restoring and organizing my photos for transfer. Since I have limited time at home its going slower then I had expected.

consider the record set straight....i look forward to going to Kenya!

[SamirD]

...I travel 90 percent of the time for my job, which often takes me to remote regions of the globe. Just last week I spent 15 days in Kenya and amassed 16 gigs of raw pictures which when translated to jpeg equals about 7gig. I shot over 1200 photos.Sounds like a dream job to me. :thumb

Someday, I wish to do the same with covering car events around the world. :lust

[Baldy]

Let me set the record straight.... I travel 90 percent of the time for my job, which often takes me to remote regions of the globe. This collection has been buildt over long period of time. Just last week I spent 15 days in Kenya and amassed 16 gigs of raw pictures which when translated to jpeg equals about 7gig. I shot over 1200 photos.

While I can't say every photo is award winning. I can claim that anyone who has never been to any of these remote locations would definitly feel they had been there after viewing my photos.

Given that I travel atlot, when I am at home I spend my time with my family. So computers and photography come after. Which doesn't leave much time.

As far as a status update I am currently in the process of restoring and organizing my photos for transfer. Since I have limited time at home its going slower then I had expected.Hey bl8ter,

This has probably been said before in this thread so I apologize for repeats, but the JPEG setting you save your photos at makes an enormous difference in size without affecting quality.

For example, top labs like whcc recommend you save your images at JPEG 10 because it produces 1/3rd the file size and no one has been able to tell the difference in quality with a 12. 12 is usually double the size in bytes of the camera super-fine setting as well.

Thanks,
Chris

[Canon10D]

As far as a status update I am currently in the process of restoring and organizing my photos for transfer. Since I have limited time at home its going slower then I had expected.

I can't wait to see your collection. While I have no where near as meny images as you do, I'v decided to upload a bit more of my good and decent images.

I also salute you for putting family first when you're home.

Glenn

[dragon300zx]

Not only do we have some new GigE links, we have some new toys that're capable of 10GigE. Mmmmm.

Don

Tease....:cry

[marlof]

Just last week I spent 15 days in Kenya and amassed 16 gigs of raw pictures which when translated to jpeg equals about 7gig. I shot over 1200 photos.

Been there. Done that. Have the T-shirt. Several actually. Last time it took me 30 minutes to wade out the 400 out of 1200 initial keepers that I liked best. And that is after chimping each night through the days pictures, and deleting the ones that were not keepers anyhow. Of the 1200 remaining, on my computer 800 images proofed to be only so so, and definitely not good enough to bother anyone with. My problem is that no one in their right mind is willing to see the 400 remaining images. So I used another 30 minutes made a "the very best of" of only 60 images. This is the series I will show and share. The other 340 I did keep, and will put on Smugmug for those who are really interested. Not having to keep track of the deleted images sure saved me time in worrying about keeping them, storing them, etc.

But then again, I'm probably just bad at taking pictures. And I do relate to the feeling that being home should mean spending more quality time with your family, and not let the computer dictate your life. I'm looking forward to seeing your images.

[Seamus]

bump for an update?

[ColoPete]

bump for an update?
any word on what happened ?

[claudermilk]

I just stumbled across this thread and am blown away. The level of customer service shown here is incredible. The more I poke around the site, the more I realize I made the right decision to give SmugMug a try to help get me going for photo sales. :clap

I'm curious as to the outcome as well.

[Rhuarc]

Ok, so I realize this topic is fairly old at this point, but I'm really curious as to waht happened with this. Did this guy ever sign up? Or did smugmug install all the equipment and it is now sitting around waiting to be used? Eitehr way i still give SM props for their costumer commitment.

[Baldy]

Ok, so I realize this topic is fairly old at this point, but I'm really curious as to waht happened with this.:D We installed the equipment and everyone else used it. Photos have been coming fast & furious, so nothing was wasted.

[mcgil]

Some 90 percent of my images are on DVDs will need to be restored to my machine for uploading

Hi,

Would you mind sharing a bit on how your photo recovery worked from your DVDs, did you get any failures ?

I only had ~20GB stored a few months on DVD but when I tried to recover them 2 out of 5 DVDs gave me reading errors on some files ... fortunately I still had the files on several hard disks.

McGil

[olegos]

I only had ~20GB stored a few months on DVD but when I tried to recover them 2 out of 5 DVDs gave me reading errors on some files ... fortunately I still had the files on several hard disks.
McGil, what brand of DVDs did you use? This issue has been troubling me for awhile, and lately I've heard very good things about Verbatim DataLifePlus DVDs. I'm now using them exclusively for everything but the stuff I need only temporarily.

[mcgil]

I used Memorex ... I thought they were good ... I used to use their audio tape in the 80's :)


McGil, what brand of DVDs did you use? This issue has been troubling me for awhile, and lately I've heard very good things about Verbatim DataLifePlus DVDs. I'm now using them exclusively for everything but the stuff I need only temporarily.

[olegos]

I used Memorex ... I thought they were good ... I used to use their audio tape in the 80's :) A co-worker tested several brands of DVD-/+R's himself. By buring it, then reading back, and reading the number of errors out of the drive (some burining software displays that under "drive info" -- there is a number of retries that the drive will do transparently, without reporting any errors, but records that in stats). Memorex were the worst. Verbatim, even regular cheapest ones, were the best with 0 errors, as were DataLifePlus (Memorex had many thousands of errors).

[florindo]

<snip>

So we've always said "unlimited storage" and we mean what we say. We're happy to take your photos and host them, but we need a little time to prepare.

Just so you know, this is something like a $20,000 first-year commitment for us in terms of disk space, power, cooling, and physical space. You'll basically have two complete RAID arrays to yourself in our datacenter. Of course, you'll only pay your $30, $50, or $100 per year, depending on your account level. Again, we're happy to do it - but I want to be up front here and let you know that we need to order some equipment and get it installed to accept your photos. We're not geared for accepting 2.5TB overnight. :)

We'll also be buying extra image processing machines just for your batch of photos. Luckily, once yours are done, everyone else at smugmug will get to benefit from them, so I don't consider that a cost to host you.

Does that sound fair? Can we ask you to hold off while we order and install the equipment and power required?

Thanks!

Don

How the heck do you people stay in business?! :dunno Hey, I appreciate the great service and all, but sheesh! Even if you had 75% of your users using little space and bandwidth and the other 25% going crazy, I'd suspect you'd still have low profit margins with what you're offering.

But who am I to argue? I'll take it! :D

[jfriend]

How the heck do you people stay in business?! :dunno Hey, I appreciate the great service and all, but sheesh! Even if you had 75% of your users using little space and bandwidth and the other 25% going crazy, I'd suspect you'd still have low profit margins with what you're offering.

But who am I to argue? I'll take it! :D

It's got to be a "law of large numbers" game. The high storage users (like me) get balanced by the casual users who may only add a few galleries a year to make an average that is probably quite reasonable. Meanwhile storage costs are dropping faster than sensor megapixels are growing.

It's analagous to unlimited friends and family cellular calling. If everyone really took advantage of it, the network would be overloaded, but most don't so they can use it as a marketing strategy to attract new customers and the average usage across millions of users doesn't actually go up much.

[JimM]

I have a feeling that the larger storage users sell more photos too (to increase the revenue they generate). I don't sell a ton, but SM has made much more than the $150/yr subscription in print revenues from me.

[claudermilk]

Funny this thread got resurrected. I was wondering what ever happened to him. This thread went a long way to convince me to go with SM, and I have not regretted it. Last i remember the hardware was installed & waiting; sounds like the 2TB of data never materialized & all the rest of us filled up those servers instead.

I know I'm using up a good chunk of space, but I also do some modest sales (hopefully more than that as time goes on), and use some space for family who are also ordering prints, so print revenue ought to be balancing the costs.

[I Simonius]

seriously.

i want to go get some popcorn and see how this thread plays out!

Wonder if we'll need a maintenance alert of "Guess who's uploading tonight?" when he comes back?:rofl

anyway........looks like the OPs been detained on his travels ...

[Baldy]

Don just gave a talk at Etech about how we do storage:

http://powdermonkey.blogs.com/powdermonkey/

At one time, the 2 TB would have been hard to swallow, but no more.

[Dna]

Don just gave a talk at Etech about how we do storage:

http://powdermonkey.blogs.com/powdermonkey/

At one time, the 2 TB would have been hard to swallow, but no more.Cool.
*eyes pile of DVDs in corner ...*

:rofl:wink

Andrew

[Baldy]

Here's Don's slides from Etech:

http://blogs.smugmug.com/onethumb/files/ETech-SmugMug-Amazon-2007.pdf

[onethumb]

Getting some questions about 'unlimited' since Phanfare has apparently changed the meaning of the word today. Lest anyone call our version of 'unlimited' into question, here's my post from earlier in this thread from 2005, which still stands.

When SmugMug says Unlimited, we mean it.

Wow, that must be close to 500,000 JPEGs! Quite a collection - I can't wait to see them. :)

So we've always said "unlimited storage" and we mean what we say. We're happy to take your photos and host them, but we need a little time to prepare.

Just so you know, this is something like a $20,000 first-year commitment for us in terms of disk space, power, cooling, and physical space. You'll basically have two complete RAID arrays to yourself in our datacenter. Of course, you'll only pay your $30, $50, or $100 per year, depending on your account level. Again, we're happy to do it - but I want to be up front here and let you know that we need to order some equipment and get it installed to accept your photos. We're not geared for accepting 2.5TB overnight. :)

We'll also be buying extra image processing machines just for your batch of photos. Luckily, once yours are done, everyone else at smugmug will get to benefit from them, so I don't consider that a cost to host you.

Does that sound fair? Can we ask you to hold off while we order and install the equipment and power required?

Thanks!

Don

[SamirD]

After going through the presentation and being a SM customer with over 340gb online, SM is the way to go. :thumb You guys have a passion for your business like we have a passion for our businesses. :barb