BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

My idea would be to lump together all the files in a huge torrent. That would inevitably attract many peers, so the problem would be solved if users did selective downloading, as the whole would be too large for any one of them.

The system would need to use some disk space and bandwidth from each peer to host some shards of the whole. Not all the data in the mega-torrent would be downloaded, just some sensible section of it, like, say, 5GB. Between 1000 users, we could have 1TB of files. With a million, we could have a huge library. This way we could have enough seeds for any part of the whole. Of course, it would need a way to add new stuff on the fly and balance the replicas.

tl;dr - I'd rather have a solution for rare torrents. I'm worried for all the content that is not "hot enough". We could amass a huge library of rare stuff, in time.

edit: The UX needs a bit of polishing. I don't think my Mom is going to be able to figure this out.

This correct solution is precisely what BitTorrent Sync provides. So that's all the more reason to be thankful that a seemingly excellent sync solution has finally arrived.

Some detail for you:

I use Aperture for most photos. I use Lightroom for slides. On the PC side, you should use Lightroom. It's just gone into beta for version 5, try it now for free.

I strongly prefer the Aperture workflow, but for slides Aperture won't recognize my 64 bit .DNG files with infrared channel as being part of a JPEG/RAW pair, while Lightroom will.

I manage photos on the latest Mac Mini with the Fusion Drive, but the photo libraries are actually stored on Western Digital MyBook Velociraptor Duo Thunderbolt drives[1] which are insanely fast in RAID0 mode. With Thunderbolt I can attach that to a laptop or the Mac Mini and Aperture is licensed for 5 computers. I had been using the built in Fusion drive for my latest project triage, but the Velociraptor drives in RAID0 are so fast it's not worth the hassle of splitting that out.

I use a nightly rsync to replicate the libraries onto a LaCie 4big via Firewire 800. I never have less than two copies of photos on two devices, because I use a Nexto DI[2] to import the photos from flash while on the go, then I import from that into my libraries, leaving copies on it until I need space. Or, for things like iPhone imports, I import to the LaCie RAID, then import into Aperture's RAID0 library for speed, and again, only delete from the RAIDs when I need space and after I know Aperture's backed up. I also have a Backblaze[5] job backing up everything offsite for their flat fee.

I have three libraries, one for 2000-2010, one for the current decade, and one for international travel. While travel is less frequent, a trip generates more photos, so my domestic and international libraries tend to be similar in size. Each is 50K to 150K photos, and in the 350GB - 750GB range.

I use Aperture's library in the fully imported mode, where photos are stored in the library. This way I'll never accidentally move or delete a photo I want to keep. Of course, the library is just a package folder, you can CTRL-Click it to open it up and get at any of your import sessions original or raw files. Even if the DB is completely destroyed, the photos are safe.

I use the incredible Nik Collection of plugins. They were worth it at $750, and so much more worth it at Google's new price of $149[3]. These plugins work with Lightroom or Photoshop as well.

With over a decade of DSLR photos under management, I recommend you use a folder and image naming scheme like this:

    yyyy
      yyyy-mm-dd event descriptor
        Event Descriptor (nnn).ext

        yyyy-mm-dd hh.mm.ss event descriptor nnn (ORIGINAL-FILENAME).ext

---

Links referenced:

1. http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_my_book_velocir...

2. http://www.amazon.com/Nexto-Digital-Photo-Storage-ND2730/dp/...

3. http://www.niksoftware.com/

4. http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

5. http://www.backblaze.com