Cloud storage advice for permanent back-up

[Rhood]

Hi all,

what are you all using as a cloud storage service.
Anybody using it as a permanent back-up or has permanent back-up solution?

Been looking into Backblaze, but I'm not sure if I'm convinced. What holds me back is that it makes a back-up of entire system, while I actually would like to choose. Also apparently the upload speed is very low.
Yes, I also use physical hard drives.

Currently need at least 4tb.

Thoughts?
What do you use? What do you recommend?

[Anaconda_]

Get a Nas and if you can, keep it off site. Access from anywhere, private and has redundancy. Even better, no subscription fees!

[Rhood]

Hi Anaconda,

thank you for your input.
The thing is, currently I only have one location.
So if I get a NAS, it would be at the same location as my other physical drives.
I think the only solution to this is a cloud service, unless I'm mistaken?

[Anaconda_]

It's up to you, the main reason to have Nas off site is to be safe if there's a flood / fire. But then what if the place your Nas is has a fire or flood? If you're not worried about that, then I believe Nas is better in the long run.

I looked into cloud services not long ago, but mostly for sending or requesting large files to and from clients. In the end, Nas was the best way to go for me. Mostly becuase I want back end control and refuse to subscribe to that kind of service.

One service that really got me thinking though, was Lucidlink. It does a lot and is pretty well priced, but if your only requirement is storage and backup, it might be overkill.

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

I use iDrive. Ok upload speed, have the option to backup both to a external drive and the cloud.

[newfoundmass]

The main problem with cloud storage I've had is that every company eventually either decreases their offerings or drastically raises their prices. You're kind of at the mercy of whatever company you go with. 

About 10 years ago I had all my stuff backed up to a service called Bitcasa. What it provided then would be considered incredible today. For like $99/year you would get unlimited storage, and all these bells and whistles. I had terabytes of data on there when they raised the price to $999/year. 

I moved my data to Amazon Drive. That worked fine for a few years, until they too raised the price and eventually offered only unlimited storage for photos. 

After hopping around from service to service I just decided to create back ups on hard drives and store them in a fire proof safe. Once I set up my office I'll build a NAS, but things are working okay right now especially since I have gigabit fiber internet, so if I need to share something I can upload it to Google Drive within an hour. 

[Rhood]

8 hours ago, Marcio Kabke Pinheiro said:

I use iDrive. Ok upload speed, have the option to backup both to a external drive and the cloud.

Thanks, that's the one I'm considering now. I read they had faster speeds than others.

5 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

The main problem with cloud storage I've had is that every company eventually either decreases their offerings or drastically raises their prices. You're kind of at the mercy of whatever company you go with. 

About 10 years ago I had all my stuff backed up to a service called Bitcasa. What it provided then would be considered incredible today. For like $99/year you would get unlimited storage, and all these bells and whistles. I had terabytes of data on there when they raised the price to $999/year. 

I moved my data to Amazon Drive. That worked fine for a few years, until they too raised the price and eventually offered only unlimited storage for photos. 

After hopping around from service to service I just decided to create back ups on hard drives and store them in a fire proof safe. Once I set up my office I'll build a NAS, but things are working okay right now especially since I have gigabit fiber internet, so if I need to share something I can upload it to Google Drive within an hour. 

That's exactly one of my other concerns.

[Davide DB]

https://www.cubbit.io/pricing

Cloud or cell

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

On 12/8/2022 at 1:12 AM, newfoundmass said:

The main problem with cloud storage I've had is that every company eventually either decreases their offerings or drastically raises their prices. You're kind of at the mercy of whatever company you go with. 

About 10 years ago I had all my stuff backed up to a service called Bitcasa. What it provided then would be considered incredible today. For like $99/year you would get unlimited storage, and all these bells and whistles. I had terabytes of data on there when they raised the price to $999/year. 

I moved my data to Amazon Drive. That worked fine for a few years, until they too raised the price and eventually offered only unlimited storage for photos. 

After hopping around from service to service I just decided to create back ups on hard drives and store them in a fire proof safe. Once I set up my office I'll build a NAS, but things are working okay right now especially since I have gigabit fiber internet, so if I need to share something I can upload it to Google Drive within an hour. 

Indeed - it you have an office, studio or someone's house with good internet connection, better put a connected NAS in two places and keep them in sync.

And yes, you MUST have an offsite backup, be in cloud or remote NAS. People always think that backup is for a failing drive, but forget that you equipment on site could be robbed or cought by fire. Extreme situations, but these are the ones that you will lose your data forever.

[Ty Harper]

On 12/7/2022 at 11:12 PM, newfoundmass said:

The main problem with cloud storage I've had is that every company eventually either decreases their offerings or drastically raises their prices. You're kind of at the mercy of whatever company you go with. 

Totally agree. As a hobbyist I have considered having two backups offsite at family members' places but haven't gone through with it. Seems like some combo of NAS and at least two offsite backups in different locations is way more practical and cost effective than the cloud options. It just requires consistent due diligence on our part. Even if you forgot to update your offsite backups for say a year and something happened to one of them or your main storage - you're guaranteed to never take the kind of hit you would if you lost it all. Another practical offsite option might be a safety deposit box although I'm not sure how much those cost. But when's the last time you heard about a bank being flooded or burning down to the ground?

[Rhood]

Ok, I've been reading very bad reviews on quasi all kinds of cloud storage.
I thought everybody used cloud storage, maybe they don't know the risks.

That means there are two options left.

1. NAS at home and NAS at family member's house that I can access from my home.

2. Continue with hooked up physical drive's, which I mirror to one another. But one (or two) of them are at family member's house and/or deposit box.

Option 2 is very hard to keep track of and takes a lot of discipline. But apart from that is pretty simple...

[newfoundmass]

I'd go with option 1. 

[Rhood]

Yes indeed. I'm going with option 1.

Any specialists out here with recommendations?

I'm thinking of buying older Mac mini as a NAS. 

At Location B (which is offsite, somewhere at a family members house) it's meant solely as a back-up.
At Location A it's meant as a back-up, but I might also look through files and copy them to a work drive. If it can be a work drive, even better but I think that's not possible on a low budget.
 

[Robert Collins]

On 12/18/2022 at 4:40 AM, Rhood said:

Ok, I've been reading very bad reviews on quasi all kinds of cloud storage.
I thought everybody used cloud storage, maybe they don't know the risks.

I just wanted to put in a good word for 'cloud storage' to the extent it helped/saved' me. I 'accidentally' deleted a year of photos some time ago and by the time I realized, my 'back ups' had 'synced' and that years photos had been deleted too. Luckily my 'cloud storage' let me 'go back in time' so I could restore the photos that had been deleted. 

My point being is that if your back up is based on 'backing up/syncing' your primary source there is some 'risk'. 

[newfoundmass]

Cloud back up is fine for short term purposes, or if you're not dealing with TONS of data, but unless you're paying a significant amount for some enterprise level service or building your own back up workflow using AWS S3 Glacier storage or something, you're inevitably going to run into issues, whether it's limitations or price increases. 

Ultimately it is a case by case thing, and you're mileage will vary. If you're only dealing with 1 or 2 TBs of data that's one thing. But most everyone I know has had nothing but bad luck when it comes to larger amounts of data, due to price increases or limits being imposed. And when you've got a massive amount of data it's not that easy to switch from one cloud storage server to another. The only exception has been those who can afford or work for companies that can afford enterprise solutions with companies. Most of us though don't have thousands of dollars to spend on online storage. 

Photos are also a lot easier than video when it comes to cloud storage. Consumer level services like Dropbox or Google Drive are often enough for a lot of photographers. 

 

[1Ale82]

If you have your own website, you can use some of the hosting space you already bought for yourself as a "cloud" storage option under a password protected directory, but 4TB of data probably is beyond what most hosting companies usually allow on shared servers unless you go with a VPS or other plans. But probably in this case you should also keep an eye on the bandwidth limits most hosting companies have (upload in smaller batches...)

 

For documents,  pdf, general files, etc I use dropdox but the maximum space is not much.

 

You can also consider the Western Digital 8TB My Book Duo Desktop Raid, it comes with HDD and not SSD. And for offsite storage, as other said, keep a copy in the house of parents, relatives, etc.