Cloud storage : what do you use?

[pettinhouse]

ICloud and google drive. Dropbox for the iPad

[Kalamata Kid]

No Online backup
About every two weeks I exchange my backup drive with the one in the Bank vault.
Try to do a back-up weekly on a third drive which stays at home.

I confess, in reality it's not every two weeks!
But it is not funny when all of a sudden the drive fails and I have lost data.
Has happened before.

Bank vault for all the important documents, insurance policies and hard drives.

[topaz]

I think a lot of this is how much we actually NEED to backup offsite.

All my audio work with all pre masters, masters stems etc comes in at around 1.5tb , pruned at around 250gb.

Photos videos 30gb, samples libs around 1.5tb

Impossible to back all that up to cloud as just too expensive.

That's why I'm thinking about it all on a 6tb drive and only using google drive or similar for new songs, New family photos etc.

Trying to back all that other stuff to cloud is as far as I can see pointless and way to pricey.

[Jace-BeOS]

Whoa... Is it true a hard drive is more likely to fail if it sits for too long, unused?

No. Why would they? Hard drive failure is normally related to the mechanical components overheating. Or too many write operations, when it comes to SSD's. I can't see how sitting too long would affect them at all.

I think there is even a command for securing a hard drive when not in use, for instance during transport. Like with washing machines, basically, just not with bolts

You're thinking of parking heads. Modern drives have been doing that for a very long time now, automatically, on power cutoff.

[Jace-BeOS]

Whoa... Is it true a hard drive is more likely to fail if it sits for too long, unused?

No. Why would they? Hard drive failure is normally related to the mechanical components overheating. Or too many write operations, when it comes to SSD's. I can't see how sitting too long would affect them at all.

Feel free to correct me with references, but I've read that the spindles and heads can become jammed from extended disuse. Supposedly, spindle lubrication settles over time when in disuse, which is partially why drives get noisier the older they get. Maybe these types of spindle motors aren't even used anymore.

I've had a lot of SCSI drives that sat disused become shockingly loud upon being started up for the first time in many years, as well as heads that won't un-park. If this is caused by something other than just sitting unused, please inform me of the causes.

[topaz]

The issue with Backblaze was me, I got kind of overwhelmed by having things backed up on various drives.

What I have done is ordered a 4tb WD red that I will put inside my Mac Pro purely as a cloud drive.

Basically anything valuable will be stored on it and only that drive will be synced on Backblaze cloud.

Once that is full I will just have to add another.

Basically it gets messy trying to cloud mirror multiple smaller drives.

[pettinhouse]

I thought you meant online cloud. Anyway, as a cloud drive ( no online cloud ) I use a 4Tb on my Mac Pro 4.1
In this machine there is plenty of space for HDD and with Time Machine the backup is painless.
I had SMART problems with 2 seagate HDD and I lost many files. It is a well known problem related to a particular model. Hope they fixed it so before buying an HDD search on google if the Hard Disk you want to buy has some known problem.

I can suggest you the WD Gold series which is made for servers. It cost more than ordinary HDD but the backup is more precious than money.

Andrea

[SparkySpark]

I too am looking for an online/cloud backup solution. It is not easy! Here are my findings:

Dropbox, Onedrive, pCloud, iSync, and Google Drive sync their stuff. So if I accidentally delete some data on the cloud server, my computer will lose the same data! These are not backup solutions (nor intended to be).

BackBlaze mirrors your local drive. So if you delete a file locally by accident it will be deleted at BackBlaze too! If you upload data from an external drive and don't plug it in for a month, then guess what? Yep, the data will be deleted.

I am now considering iCloud. They have both a "vault" for backup and a place for file sharing. It seems everybody else are idiots.

Any thoughts? I need to set this up promptly. Thanks!

[mgw38]

I too am looking for an online/cloud backup solution. It is not easy! Here are my findings:

Dropbox, Onedrive, pCloud, iSync, and Google Drive sync their stuff. So if I accidentally delete some data on the cloud server, my computer will lose the same data! These are not backup solutions (nor intended to be).

BackBlaze mirrors your local drive. So if you delete a file locally by accident it will be deleted at BackBlaze too! If you upload data from an external drive and don't plug it in for a month, then guess what? Yep, the data will be deleted.

I am now considering iCloud. They have both a "vault" for backup and a place for file sharing. It seems everybody else are idiots.

Any thoughts? I need to set this up promptly. Thanks!

Dropbox has a versioning system. You can go back to previous versions even if you delete files. It goes back 30 days. Have done that multiple times.

[SparkySpark]

Yes, thanks, but what if you deleted some files or folders and didn't notice that one of them shouldn't have been deleted?

That is why I say this is not really backup. It even gives one a false sense of security.

[SparkySpark]

Oh no! Not Apple's iCloud! I meant iDrive!

https://www.idrive.com/cloud-backup

Or Sync.com anyway, I investigated this matter for hours and for them mixed up.

Here's my communication with a Sync.com rep:

Thanks fro contacting us.

> I have trouble understanding where you stand between sync and archiving.

Sync offers both syncing and archiving. The two ways to backup files are as follows:

1. The Sync folder. When you install Sync a special "Sync folder" is created on your computer. Files you move or copy into the Sync folder get backed up to the cloud in realtime. These files can also be "optionally" synced to other computers and securely shared with other users.

2. The Vault. When you install the Sync desktop app you can "right click" on any file or folder on your computer, or external drives, and send it directly to the cloud. This is a one-time copy (without syncing), and it's a great way to backup and archive your files in the cloud.

> I and my wife have one laptop each, which should be automatically copied (for documents, family photos, etc).

On your laptop computers you would want to move your files into the Sync folder. If you work directly out of the Sync folder your files will always be backed up to the cloud automatically.

> Also, we would like our Android smartphones to be able to automatically upload photos as well.

Yes, the Sync mobiles apps include automatic camera upload, which automatically uploads your photos and videos.

> Then, we would like to be able to select files/folders to download. From what I udnerstand of Selective Sync, we need to deselect these options, meaning that we must already have downloaded the data.

You can use selective Sync to choose which folders get downloaded to each computer you install Sync on. Selective Sync can be configured before your folders are downloaded (you do not have to downloaded the data first).

> So if we upload all our photos, they must be downloaded to the other computer. Is this the case or is there a way around it?

If you configure selective Sync to ignore the Camera Uploads folder, then it will not download to the computer. If part of the folder has already downloaded you can simply delete it.

You can test the Sync Folder, Vault, Automatic Camera Upload, Mobile Apps and Selective Sync on the free Sync Starter plan (no credit card required, never expires). Sign up free and get the free apps from our homepage here:
https://www.sync.com/

Let us know if that helps, or if you have any more questions.

What do you think of all of this?

[topaz]

It's quite simply this.

If you delete a file by accident just download it again from Backblaze.

If you have lots of files on external drives buy a 4tb or 6tb and put them there and make that your Backblaze drive.

If you really need true cloud storage it's BackblazeB2

[SparkySpark]

It's quite simply this.

If you delete a file by accident just download it again from Backblaze.

If you have lots of files on external drives buy a 4tb or 6tb and put them there and make that your Backblaze drive.

If you really need true cloud storage it's BackblazeB2

Thanks but let's say I delete a folder of Wotd files and half a year later I realize my mistake. From what I gather, BackBlaze would have deleted it too then.

(I ask since I just broke my SSD and failed to copy one of our family photos folder. I know that in this case BackBlaze would indeed have helped.)

[SparkySpark]

Ah now I see what you mean. With two accounts, one from my computer and one from the external disk, this would work.

...but what I really want is a set and forget online backup for our computers that doesn't delete files all over the place just because they get deleted on my or my wife's computer or online.

I'd really want MS OneDrive to do this but as far as I know it will delete them.

[Etienne1973]

...but what I really want is a set and forget online backup for our computers that doesn't delete files all over the place just because they get deleted on my or my wife's computer or online.

Check out Arq backup software.