How I filled two dumpsters and went paperless
ryanwaggoner.com
ryanwaggoner.com
When I've looked into this in the past, every provider has had issues with the new and archived content volume, and sometimes even the use of external rather than internal drives (!) that has made it unviable. I couldn't see from Mozy's site whether this was the case with them as well? If not and I can genuinely back up several hundred GBs of data (phone calls from ISP notwithstanding) and potentially add tens to low hundreds of GBs new data per month, from whatever drive source I choose, this sounds like what I want. Would this be the case from your experience?
If you're adding 50GB/month, that's at least 1GB of upload per night. You'll definitely have to have a good internet connection. I haven't had any network speed issues with Mozy personally.
I should stress too - 50GB / month is a worst case scenario, not a typical usage! Raws and processed JPEGs for a couple of big events can hit that together but I don't often have a couple of big events in the same month.
i chose crashplan over mozy, after reading some bad mozy reviews (http://wonko.com/post/it_turns_out_mozy_isnt_so_hot_after_al... for instance) . I have the family plan and uploaded 200gb so far, their upload speeds are pretty good.
The only feature I'm still waiting for, is so you can specify different backup sets to archive to your local HD and to their online sevice, but that feature should be realeased with their next update. Other than that I love crashplan, especially the eature that you cannot disable it for longer than 24 hours.
You can also seed your initial backup, that way you don't have long upload times.
3 x Laptops 1 x media centre (Mac mini) 1 x family machine (Mac mini) attached to 2 x 1Tb software-raid drives.
Everyone backs up to the Mac Mini, and this is backed up to the 2 drives. This machine also backs up to Backblaze.
I too had an experience where I thought I'd lost all my photos of my kids (5 years worth) when a HD died. Luckily I had an earlier backup and I lost around 3 months worth in the end
This may not apply to government docs which are presumably stored somewhere electronically, anyway.
Some simple steps can be taken to protect data integrity and security:
-Don't leave the data connected to the Internet 24/7.
-Power off the storage medium when you are done with it.
-Keep it in a physically safe location when not in use.
-Encrypt the data or the volume.
-Have a backup of your backup on a different medium and if possible different location.
-Don't advertise the data.
These are activities which are easy to set up and can help insure a more pleasant digital lifestyle. You could go to more extremes but then it becomes invasive. Not worrying about it much because you find it unlikely or just don't care is bad. Not worrying about it much is what you want to do because you have taken the important but easy steps to keep yourself safe.
Having said that, I really am not worried about someone accessing most of these documents, and certainly not enough to go through the hassles of what you outline in your comment. If someone wants to go through the hassle of breaching my security so they can pour through my phone records for the last five years, or peer at my receipts for lunch at the restaurant around the corner, they're welcome to. What exactly are we worried about here?
Credit cards and bank account numbers are slightly more of an issue, but in the US your liability for theft from these sources is quite limited, even if you disclose the info. Plus, my bank account number is on the bottom of every check I write. What kind of scheme is that, anyway?
Don't get me wrong, I shred any paperwork with personal info, and I use encrypted services for backups, etc. But I don't lose any sleep over the worst case scenario of someone gaining access to this data.
What NeatReceipts offers over bulk PDF is the ability to capture and extract lots of metadata that is specific to the document type (it supports three types: document, receipt, and contact). You can use it to extract and export contacts from your big stack of business cards, or to create a formatted expense report from a pile of travel receipts.
What you lose is portability and accessibility, since all of the files live in a "cabinet" on your computer.
I'm in the early stages of de-papering, and I'm considering using NeatReceipts for business cards and receipts, and dumping all of the docs to PDF's that I tag and organize using Punakea (a great tagging program for MacOS).
I kept some books: my Tufte books (e.g. Visual Explanations), an old book of poetry that I inherited, my Physics 101 textbook (of sentimental value)...
I didn't run the OCR. I found it too slow and the final results didn't impress me. OCR can't handle mathematical equations. I suppose I could have used OCR on the novels, but I didn't bother.
Scanning my books was a gamble because there was no tablet or e-Reader that seemed good enough, but there were rumors of an Apple tablet coming soon. Thankfully the rumors were true!
Should you do it?
Here's what I learned. I spent a lot of time scanning stuff. When in doubt, scan it. I spent a days and weekends here and there.
I felt SUCH a relief after tossing all that physical stuff, but keeping it "just in case".
But... I've NEVER looked at the stuff I scanned.
I mean, I could look at it. I could data mine my power bills for trends. I could start categorizing my spending over the years and predict stuff.
The reality is that maybe I could have tossed the stuff (make a DECISION) and live with the consequences (which in my experience are zero).
I think I couldn't toss the stuff out of fear.
Maybe I could have used all the time saved to live a little more.
http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/COMP/fel/scansnap/s1500-cas...
The pdf's it created were pretty small and the result of the project fits into a very small chunk of my Dropbox account (50GB). Its great having all my files for the past 20 years available everywhere I go.
I don't have anything this elaborate. I have a cheap 3-in-1 printer that I scan some stuff with, and a cheap ~$70 digital camera that I use for stuff that it would be inconvenient to scan. The images are good enough to read on the computer though not great.
My Fellowes Powershred MS-450Cs isn't. I paid $170 for it, but totally worth it as I hate the loud shredders.
I use Everynote, which does OCR automatically, though I'm not sure I should be trusting them with sensitive documents...
Most MFPs are horrible amalgamations, basically discrete devices held together with cheap plastic shells and shitty driver software.
Back in the 90s I remember seeing some dot-matrix printer addons that turned the printer into a scanner, and there might have been similar gadgets for inkjets, but modern scanners and printers wouldn't share many parts. There's little to be gained from an engineering standpoint by combining the two.
I've used it with ABBYY FineReader Express[1] on my Mac to achieve the same result as the author for myself and my mum.
If you are after a toaster with a kettle, you can get one from Breville[2] and other manufacturers, including one with an egg fryer.
See, for example, here http://www.documentsnap.com/fujitsu-scansnap-in-linux/
And from an Amazon review (November 30, 2009): Also of interest is that the scanner works under Ubuntu GNU/Linux using SANE drivers and gscan2pdf. However, in my experience the scanner controls are not as complete under SANE and gscan2pdf as with Fujitsu's proprietary drivers on a MAC and PC. Other seem to have had better experiences than I. Ultimately, Linux users should know that it is possible to use this scanner; however, it may take some tweaking. But if you use Linux, you are most likely used to this.
Someone else already did the comparison for me (and you). In short; if you want to scan a lot at once and care about the speed, go with the s1500.
http://www.documentsnap.com/fujitsu-scansnap-how-are-the-s13...
Speed: 20 ppm vs 8 ppm
Capacity: 50 pages vs 10 pages