How are people using the cloud vs. an external HD?

[Ben E Lou]

We have a Dropbox subscription, and that seems like the most logical place to keep family pics and vids in case of fire/flood, but we also have a 1TB external HD that's set up as a network drive, accessible by all of our laptops. I've found myself only using the external for one-off huge copying of stuff, as in "before getting rid of old computer, copy everything in My Documents to the external." It seems like I could be getting more/better usage out of the external, but I'm not really sure what to use it for. Every time I run across something that I want to make sure I don't lose, I find myself wanting to put it on Dropbox. How are others who have both mediums using them?

[cartman]

I mainly use an external hard drive for stuff I want to backup, and have quick access to. I use "the cloud" for things I want to be able to access from multiple locations, and things I don't mind taking a while to restore if needed. After being burned in the past by having data only backed up to one medium, I am a huge proponent of having important data stored in multiple places in multiple ways.

[Icy]

I mainly use an external hard drive for stuff I want to backup, and have quick access to. I use "the cloud" for things I want to be able to access from multiple locations, and things I don't mind taking a while to restore if needed. After being burned in the past by having data only backed up to one medium, I am a huge proponent of having important data stored in multiple places in multiple ways.

Exactly my way of using dropbox and external HD.

External HD: Main backup
Dropbox/icloud: Stuff that i want to have available from everywhere and secondary backup, trying to not to put there confidental stuff.

I don't trust cloud system good enough by now both because security concerns (I bet soon we will hear about a cloud being hacked) and because lack of trust on companies to store my data forever (IE megaupload even when it was close for other reasons, but there was a lot of people using it on a legit way).

[Drake]

I use only an external HD. I live in the middle of nowhere and have only satellite internet as an option...which mens I'm capped at 250mb/day on top of crappy speeds.

I use my external drive sort of like you do, Ben, but also use it as the primary archive for music, video game downloads, pictures, etc. so the family PC's only have to carry what you're using at any given time.

Just like I'm the only guy I know without a smart phone, I'll probably be the last one to use cloud storage, too.

[Autumn]

I use an external drive for most everything, files that my wife and I share, photos, the business files, etc. I then use a cloud service to replicate most of those files (both for business purposes, and for backup). I also have an in-house backup system that replicates that entire external drive.

So basically I'm just using the cloud for customers and for backup. It allows me to access a lot of stuff if I'm away from home but that doesn't come up much.

[Ben E Lou]

Interesting. It sounds like there's not the level of concern by those posting so far that I have for fire/lightning/flood when it comes to backups. Maybe it's my own personal experience bias: in all my computing years, I've only lost one HD to a crash, but I've lost one in a fire and two to lightning. (And I live very near a flood zone now...) Now, I've never had an external HD. Are they less susceptible to lightning, or is it just that I've lived all my life in thunderstorm land, so it's a bigger concern?

[gstelmack]

I figure if I get hit with a fire / lightning / flood, I've got other things to worry about. But if I were to get worried about this, I'd do hot-swappable external drives, and once a month swap them in my safe deposit box at the bank for offsite backup. I'm not trusting a cloud with anything personal or confidential.

[jeff061]

I keep all my data on a NAS and backup to external drives. I'm really not protected in a disaster scenario though. I should probably do something to resolve that, but I don't trust any of the cloud providers.

[Easy Mac]

I've been meaning to back up pictures to the cloud, but haven't gotten around to it. I have them all backed up on an external hard drive on my pogoplug.

I just don't trust that some of these cloud services won't go out of business once the big boys like Apple or Google really jump in.

[Ben E Lou]

Right..right. We're not putting anything confidential on Dropbox, just mainly pics, music, videos, gaming-related backups, and non-confidential documents (like say copies of expense report receipts in case I get audited...it's not like the $34.99 I spent on a print cartridge needs to be secured...)

[CU Tiger]

My sister and I each have a 2TB external.
We meet for Sunday Lunch once per month and swap HDs.
We each backup monthly. This way if anything ever happens I lose no more than 1 month of data. Im probably paranoid, but I have so much data Id be screwed if I lost for ever only electronically.

Oh yeah unknown to her I have a second external that I backup to weekly and it stays in my gun safe.

[Autumn]

My external is backed up to one of those ioSafe drives, which keeps it relatively safe from flood and famine. But it's also backed up constantly to the cloud. So I feel pretty safe here.

[johnnyshaka]

I use http://www.crashplan.com and that essentially has a backup of data that I want to back on three different computers (could be more if you like)...my laptop, my home pc, and my work pc...and it's done as often as I like (automatically, if you like) and if you would like to you could pay to store stuff on their servers.

[dawgfan]

My wife is paranoid enough about fire/theft/etc that she insisted we get a Carbonite subscription, mostly as a fail-safe against losing all of our pictures of our kids.

The cost doesn't thrill me, and the initial uploading of everything took forever, but it is actually a simple process from there and provides some peace of mind. I do try to make external hard drive backups from time to time, but not nearly as much as I did prior to the Carbonite deal.

[Buccaneer]

Generally, the cloud storage would be good for backups of non-sensitive materials, as long as you don't need consistent or constant access to it.

[Autumn]

My wife is paranoid enough about fire/theft/etc that she insisted we get a Carbonite subscription, mostly as a fail-safe against losing all of our pictures of our kids.

The cost doesn't thrill me, and the initial uploading of everything took forever, but it is actually a simple process from there and provides some peace of mind. I do try to make external hard drive backups from time to time, but not nearly as much as I did prior to the Carbonite deal.

We lost, or would have, all of the pictures of my first son when he was three or four. We had hardly printed any out. We ended up paying $900 to have them recovered from the hard drive, which believe me, was pretty much all the money we possessed at the time. So it's definitely worth having a failsafe when it comes to photos.

[Autumn]

Generally, the cloud storage would be good for backups of non-sensitive materials, as long as you don't need consistent or constant access to it.

I don't know how all the cloud services work. We have Egnyte, mostly for our business. And we have a constant mirroed copy of the cloud files on our external drive here. So I work locally and it gets copied to the cloud. Our customers upload there and it automatically mirrors it here. So anything that needs to be constantly backed up, I just save it to the external. And then I also have a constant replication happening locally as well.

[Buccaneer]

I don't know how all the cloud services work. We have Egnyte, mostly for our business. And we have a constant mirroed copy of the cloud files on our external drive here. So I work locally and it gets copied to the cloud. Our customers upload there and it automatically mirrors it here. So anything that needs to be constantly backed up, I just save it to the external. And then I also have a constant replication happening locally as well.

That's an excellent option.

[terpkristin]

I use two external HDs, both 750 GB. Each has a copy of my hard drive on it. One stays at work...it's not an automatic process.

/tk

[Autumn]

I'm a big fan of this Rebit SaveMe software. It automatically backs up your entire hard drive, and other than occasional slowdowns, it does it really out of my view. I'm one of those guys who's horrible at remembering to backup, so this is great for me.

[cartman]

There's a cloud company that I recently heard about that sounds pretty good. It is http://www.crashplan.com They seem to be a lot cheaper than some of the other alternatives like Carbonite, and they have a pretty impressive customer list. I was going to try it for a couple of months and see if it is worth it.

[johnnyshaka]

There's a cloud company that I recently heard about that sounds pretty good. It is http://www.crashplan.com They seem to be a lot cheaper than some of the other alternatives like Carbonite, and they have a pretty impressive customer list. I was going to try it for a couple of months and see if it is worth it.

Ahem. Post #13. ;)

It's free to use their app to backup your stuff on own computers...or anybody willing to let you use their computer to backup on. I mean you could only use your own but you could have your brother's computer backup your stuff and he could back his stuff on yours and then you could both backup on your sister's computer. The possibilities are endless!

[cartman]

D'oh! I completely missed your post. What appealed to me was that you can use a private key to encrypt your data, so no matter where you back it up (your computer, someone else's, their for-pay servers) no one but you can see any of the data, even the file names. The only down side is if you lose the key, then you are screwed.

[Ramzavail]

hxxp://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10520

just bought one of those - its awesome.

[sterlingice]

Interesting. It sounds like there's not the level of concern by those posting so far that I have for fire/lightning/flood when it comes to backups. Maybe it's my own personal experience bias: in all my computing years, I've only lost one HD to a crash, but I've lost one in a fire and two to lightning. (And I live very near a flood zone now...) Now, I've never had an external HD. Are they less susceptible to lightning, or is it just that I've lived all my life in thunderstorm land, so it's a bigger concern?

I just don't trust "the cloud". From working in a data center, there are all sorts of instances of seemingly redundant systems poorly engineered do there is still a single point of fail.

Take the sidekick story, for example:
http://blog.sfgate.com/ybenjamin/2009/10/12/cloud-computing-snafu-deletes-microsoft-sidekick-t-mobile-data/

Second, I can't believe how many companies are putting more and more sensitive data on systems that are not theirs. It's substantially cheaper but you're really putting yourself at someone else's mercy both for security and for reliability. How safe is your stored data out in the cloud? Is that second party going to tell you if confidentiality is breached? How much of a vested interest do they really have in securing the data? Same questions can be asked about your data's integrity. How reliable is that system, really? I'm sure they would never plan a system that isn't as redundant as it should be just to save a few bucks.

My home data plan is pretty simple. I back up my work weekly from my multiple machines (source 1) on a local hard drive (source 2) I keep at home. I have a second hard drive that stays in the safety deposit box at the bank (source 3). Monthly, I go get that hard drive- copy my backups to it- and bring it back the next day. That way the only time I have all my backups in one place is one day a month and if there were ever a fire of flood- you can imagine one of the first things I'm grabbing. I could even have a layer of redundancy added where I bring my home hard drive to work on days and lock it in my desk on days when I have the bank hard drive at home. It's not a complicated plan but it gets the job done securely.

SI

[Daimyo]

I buy a family subscription to Crashplan (up to 10 computers) and use it on all my family's personal computers. For my wife and my laptops we also have external harddrives to use with time machine (crashplan can backup to both cloud and external drives simultaneously, but time machine is really good so i use it instead for the external drives). Online backup is great for emergencies, but its slow to restore so I like having the local copies for more routine stuff.

I also use Dropbox (I pay for the 50GB tier) for all my "active" files which is pretty much all work and school documents -- so I can access them anywhere or get up and running on a new computer in minutes if necessary. (crashplan backs up the dropbox folder too)

These things are all complimentary, easy to use, and cheap, why not use them all?

[PilotMan]

I have a home server that backs up all my computers, but my wife is still not content with the number of backups (think quintuplicate) that we have of our family photos (she lost 99% of her kid pics in a fire when she was young). Is dropbox going to give her the peace of mind that she needs?

[Marc Vaughan]

I have a home server that backs up all my computers, but my wife is still not content with the number of backups (think quintuplicate) that we have of our family photos (she lost 99% of her kid pics in a fire when she was young). Is dropbox going to give her the peace of mind that she needs?

Place them on a hard-disk / DVD and throw them into a vault in a bank - if she's non-techy then that'll probably give her more peace of mind than it backed up to some unknown server somewhere, if she's anything like my wife then something like that is something physical she understands and will reassure her far more than any amount of tech explanations ...

[Autumn]

Do you have any of the backups anywhere other than yourhouse? That seems the main vulnerability, and there's lots of ways around that. If you have a lot of pictures I'm not sure that Dropbox is the way you want to go - I'm not sure how the pricing per gig compares to other means. But if you just need something offsite, you can do like Marc says. If you want something that keeps updated, then Dropbox or a off-site backup software would be what you want. (Dropbox requiring that you remember to back them up to it).

[sterlingice]

Again, a small 2.5" hard drive easily fits in most bank safety deposit boxes. The night you're going to pick it up and drop it off, you leave your standard backup at work or somewhere else offsite so you don't have both backups in the same place with the original data and then you bring it back home once it's back safely at the bank.

SI

[gstelmack]

Dropbox investigating possible security breach - CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/18/tech/web/dropbox-spam-security/index.html?hpt=hp_bn5)

[JediKooter]

Shocker!!!



Not.