To Use or Not to Use The Cloud

[Fragile Bird]

My iPhone keeps telling me my phone hasn't been backed up in 56 weeks (it has been backed up onto my computer several times) because I have run out of free space provided by Apple and I need to buy space.

I have a back-up unit to back up my laptop, but I keep wondering if I should start coughing up money to use the cloud. And who's cloud services should I use, if I did? I was at a volunteer meeting and asked some friends, and a number said they use the cloud. We didn't have time to have a complete discussion about the topic, but other friends said they don't trust either the security of providers nor do they trust that providers aren't data mining information they have stored. What a nightmare it would be if hackers hacked a cloud provider, and from what I've seen hackers do I assume that will inevitably happen, and then we're really screwed, aren't we?

What are you doing, hive mind? What provider do you use, how much storage space do you have and how much do you pay? And how does it work, anyway?

I can't be the only person here who doesn't use the cloud....

[Dr. Pepper]

I just switched today from android to iphone.  On the android I had everything backed up to google.  I had reservations about it, but the fact is all my info is already out there.  I had a couple reasons for switching to iphone and while I generally like it, I'm really disappointed at how little cloud space there is.  I wasn't using the cloud with my Macbook or iPad.  I'll probably seek elsewhere when I run out of space.  Or maybe go back to android

[Inigima]

What exactly do you want to back up, FB?

[Fragile Bird]

14 minutes ago, Inigima said:

What exactly do you want to back up, FB?

Ini, it's my business records and pictures, mainly. But business correspondence is most important. I make hard copies of everything, but it would be a pain in the ass to have to go through files to find stuff, instead of just checking stuff on the computer.

I'm not that worried about my iPhone, except my pictures are all there. My e-mail can be accessed from my laptop or tablet, if the phone went down. The idea of paying Apple to store the history of app usage (what, I'm afraid of losing my Candy Crush levels?) seems silly otherwise.

I figure my storage unit should be adequate, shouldn't it? And like I said, I have hard copies of everything, but I guess if my house burned down I'd be up a creek.

[Iskaral Pust]

For actual files, documents, archives, etc, I use DropBox for cloud back-up.  It runs automatically in the background on my home laptop and it’s pretty cheap to get 200-300gb of storage.  We also store personal photos and videos (which takes up most of the allowance), but not our music collection.  I decided that hard drives are too fragile to store a lifetime of memories in photos and videos.

I also scan hard copy docs to PDF if I need them and keep them on Dropbox.  We don’t store much at home in hard-copy other than three years of tax files, insurance policies, mortgage docs, etc. (and we scan all of those too).  

Dropbox backs up their servers so your data can’t be lost to you (you can always retrieve a copy from before a hack).  Only downside is that work firewalls block Dropbox (fear of espionage) so I can never retrieve any information while using my work laptop, e.g. when I tried to share materials from my MBA program with some colleagues.

You can trust to their security and encryption or you can also encrypt any sensitive docs before you upload.  Only a small amount of your storage space needs encryption — not your photos and videos.

I’m guessing any good cloud service would be similar to Dropbox but that’s the one I chose.

For my iPhone, I use the Apple Cloud.  But that’s just covering photos on my telephone plus light data for a handful of apps.  You can modify settings to select which data is backed up.  I don’t back-up music or podcasts or downloaded TV episodes or back-issues of newspapers/magazines, or my son’s Minecraft.  My usage is pretty minor but it makes it easy to switch to a new phone, to exchange photos with my wife’s iPhone, and to avoid ever losing any photos since my last upload to my laptop. 

[Loge]

6 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Ini, it's my business records and pictures, mainly. But business correspondence is most important. I make hard copies of everything, but it would be a pain in the ass to have to go through files to find stuff, instead of just checking stuff on the computer.

I'm not that worried about my iPhone, except my pictures are all there. My e-mail can be accessed from my laptop or tablet, if the phone went down. The idea of paying Apple to store the history of app usage (what, I'm afraid of losing my Candy Crush levels?) seems silly otherwise.

I figure my storage unit should be adequate, shouldn't it? And like I said, I have hard copies of everything, but I guess if my house burned down I'd be up a creek.

Apple's cloud works quite well these days, not just for backups. It also makes your files available across your (Apple) devices. Might be less useful if your computers are Windows machines, though. Keeping your photo library on the phone is a very bad idea. You'll lose it sooner or later. Either sync to your computer or buy the cloud space, or both. And of course, backing up that computer is vital, too. 

I keep my photo library, which is mostly shot with DSLRs, on my iMac at home using the Photos App. It is synced to iCloud and backed up hourly to alternating hard drives. 

Oh, and it's 10 Euro a month for 2 TB of cloud storage. (I guess 10 $ in the US).

As for being hacked, there is always that danger. But if you are mainly concerned about your business correspondence, then your email provider is of course the primary target. How do you handle your email? Does it all stay on your provider's servers? Or does it get deleted when you download it?

[Inigima]

10 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Ini, it's my business records and pictures, mainly. But business correspondence is most important. I make hard copies of everything, but it would be a pain in the ass to have to go through files to find stuff, instead of just checking stuff on the computer.

I'm not that worried about my iPhone, except my pictures are all there. My e-mail can be accessed from my laptop or tablet, if the phone went down. The idea of paying Apple to store the history of app usage (what, I'm afraid of losing my Candy Crush levels?) seems silly otherwise.

I figure my storage unit should be adequate, shouldn't it? And like I said, I have hard copies of everything, but I guess if my house burned down I'd be up a 

Okay. So what I do is this: I have local backups of what I care about to an external hard drive, which will protect me in the event of a hard drive failure on my PC. The cost of that is just the cost of an external hard drive; they usually come with software to automate the backup process, although you can also buy other software if you want. I use a program called Second Copy, which was like $20 and has never not worked great for me.

I also worry about ransomware, though, or something like a fire, which would obviously cause my local backups to fare no better than the other copy. So I also back up to a cloud backup service. Until now I have been using Crashplan, because it was $50/year, but they are discontinuing that service so I will have to migrate to another service. The two main contenders for me are BackBlaze, which has been making a big play for Crashplan customers, and SpiderOak. SpiderOak's main thing is privacy -- everything is encrypted and not even the company can get into it -- but I am mostly backing up my purchased music so I don't care very much about that. It may be a consideration for your work, though.

Neither BackBlaze nor SpiderOak is as cheap as Crashplan, but they're close. Some nice features of BackBlaze: unlimited storage, and besides online restores, for a fee they will FedEx you a physical drive with your data. Some nice features of SpiderOak: Link sharing, encryption, and native mobile support. I am leaning toward SpiderOak myself. Edit: I thought SpiderOak had support for mobile backups, but I'm wrong. And I think BackBlaze supports link sharing too. This is going to complicate my decision and maybe yours.

A backup plan like this costs some money, but not very much, and I am much more comfortable knowing that I have both on- and off-site backups. That's my recommendation. Apple's iCloud service seems like it might be nice if you are already deeply entrenched in the Apple ecosystem (say, if your computers are all Macs, your phone is an iPhone, and maybe you have an iPad) and never plan to leave, but for me it's too inflexible and I don't really trust Apple. The pricing is pretty competitive, though.

Kudos to you for getting out ahead on this. Most people need to get burned really, really badly at least once before they start taking backups seriously.

[Inigima]

An update: A lot of review sites really like BackBlaze, because it's easy to use and well-priced, but commenters say they've had negative experiences actually restoring files, which is of course the whole point. One person said they had a fresh install and reinstalled BackBlaze, and their backups were wiped because the machine that was now the backup source of record had no data to back up; support told them they were out of luck and they should have downloaded their data from the website first. Another commenter said their backup was corrupted and they didn't know and lost everything

Backups you don't test are no backups at all -- please try to restore stuff occasionally to make sure it's working.

There are some other negatives for me personally -- for example, BackBlaze tries to back up what it thinks it should, and you have to go manually exclude anything you don't want backed up. I don't care about most of the stuff it would back up and would rather manually choose what folders to back up.

In light of these reports I think I am not comfortable entrusting my data to BackBlaze and I am going to try out SpiderOak. There are some other options but SpiderOak is a known name with a rep for both security and support.

[maarsen]

13 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Ini, it's my business records and pictures, mainly. But business correspondence is most important. I make hard copies of everything, but it would be a pain in the ass to have to go through files to find stuff, instead of just checking stuff on the computer.

I'm not that worried about my iPhone, except my pictures are all there. My e-mail can be accessed from my laptop or tablet, if the phone went down. The idea of paying Apple to store the history of app usage (what, I'm afraid of losing my Candy Crush levels?) seems silly otherwise.

I figure my storage unit should be adequate, shouldn't it? And like I said, I have hard copies of everything, but I guess if my house burned down I'd be up a creek.

Buy a backup hard drive. Download all your files onto it that need to be kept secure.  Buy a second drive and copy the first one onto it. Rent a safety deposit box and put one drive into it. Once a month or so swap drives. I think the price would be about the same as using a cloud service. Alternatively, use an email provider that allows unlimited storage and email everything you need to keep safe to yourself. Or use a combo of both.

[Fragile Bird]

Thank you guys, much to think about!

 

[Loge]

13 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Buy a backup hard drive. Download all your files onto it that need to be kept secure.  Buy a second drive and copy the first one onto it. Rent a safety deposit box and put one drive into it. Once a month or so swap drives. I think the price would be about the same as using a cloud service. Alternatively, use an email provider that allows unlimited storage and email everything you need to keep safe to yourself. Or use a combo of both.

That's not a valid backup strategy. You need incremental backups to be able to able to restore data you inadvertently deleted or messed up. And some of your data might be corrupt but you haven't noticed that yet. That's why keeping copies of the latest version isn't good enough. Still, having a snapshot of your data in a safe place is a good idea. 

[Sophelia]

I have a lot of photos so dropbox does not work out affordable for me.  I've been using Carbonite as cloud backup but a friend suggested a nas drive.  This is like a hard disc which attaches to your router and can be accessed from elsewhere like a personal cloud - this might be another option you could look into.

[Liver and Onions]

Multiple back ups on a variety of media, tangible and intangible, seem to be a good idea. 

Any recommendations for lots and lots of large art files- multilayer Photoshop psds and the like?