nick205
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| posted on 5/9/23 at 01:40 PM |
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Cloud storage recommendations please
Afternoon all,
I'm after recommendations for cloud storage please?
Requirements:
1. Web based
2. Web access
3. 3 TB capacity to start and easily expandable
4. Android and iPhone app supported
5. Sensible monthly or annual cost (ideally without a contract, but I don't know how these things work)
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Mr Whippy
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| posted on 5/9/23 at 02:19 PM |
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You didn't say what your storing but I use Google drive and had zero issues, not sure if that's the same thing as "the cloud" got
tons on Google from huge photo albums and music to spreadsheets. It's either a monthly or yearly fee, can't mind but it was a small fraction
of the cost of a hard drive.
[Edited on 5/9/23 by Mr Whippy]
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nick205
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| posted on 5/9/23 at 02:58 PM |
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Storage requirements are for:
1. Photos
2. Documents
3. Music for streaming (I guess not all cloud services will accommodate this one)
4. Basically to prevent prevent a PC up with data and have shared access between family members
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robocog
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| posted on 5/9/23 at 09:37 PM |
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I run my own
(small, inexpensive and not massively powerful server running linux, and a program called owncloud)
I sync PC's and android phones, photo's, contacts calendars...can be shared between users as well...I am pretty sure it would work with
apple...but we don't have any of that here)
android app is handy as it automatically syncs from the phones, so it is trivial for the mrs to take a photo from her phone and have it automagically
appear on her PC so she can email it, post it on faceache etc without me having to manually copy or transfer stuff for her (she can be a complete
techophobe sometimes)
I know it will share calendars and I think contacts, but we don't need that level of organisation and prefer the surprise element when a due date
for an event that no one mentioned is sprung upon us
Swings and roundabouts...
No monthly fee, no contract, no risk of them pulling a service, forcing you to migrate elsewhere or locking you out of your data or leaking your
data
but YOU are the admin, and any hardware upgrades, failures, required updates or security issues are yours to deal with...
Have run it for a good few years, and not had any major incidents
I back up "the data" manually now and again to another hard disk in the server and to a NAS we have here, better than nothing but not ideal
as they are both sited in the same building, room and sat next to each other in the same cabinet, so not the same level as most paid for solutions as
they usually have synchronised servers on separate continents I guess in case of disaster..but it is at least on 3 seperate disks...mostly
Had a few "upgrades" that caused mild puckering when the software wouldn't finish an upgrade due to it not liking the versions of other
software it relies upon, and the server OS not happy about satisfying the requirements without user intervention
all thankfully solvable so far with a bit of searching, irregular enough that I forget how to do certain stuff from the command line
The server and NAS were already part of my home network and doing stuff, so it seemed logical to use that as a "cloud"
I guess if you don't already have the hardware or the inclination to play at being a toytown ISP then it possibly makes little sense to start
doing it for the sake of cloud backup
I am pretty sure that a lot of "rent server space" type operations can support running owncloud or nextcloud but I don't know if that
would work out any cheaper or reliable as other dedicated "cloud services" such as Google's
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SteveWalker
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| posted on 5/9/23 at 10:06 PM |
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For simply storing files, be they documents, photos or music, many routers can have a USB hard-disk plugged in and share it across your own network.
Secure outside access is even possible using a VPN, with the router acting as the VPN server.
For something more dedicated, a Raspberry PI, running suitable software is cheap to buy and uses very little power.
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Mr Whippy
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| posted on 6/9/23 at 06:08 AM |
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quote:
Originally posted by nick205
Storage requirements are for:
1. Photos
2. Documents
3. Music for streaming (I guess not all cloud services will accommodate this one)
4. Basically to prevent prevent a PC up with data and have shared access between family members
Sounds just like me, my wife and me share the same google photos. My whole family have the same android phone model Moto G22 (a bit weird but it ended
out that way) and everything is done through google and on our basic plan we have 100GB of storage for £15.99/ year and after 10 years I'm not
even through 40% if it.
It's amazing just how much I do through Google - Gmail, Drive, Wallet, YouTube, Sheets, Docs, Family Link, Calendar and more I can't
remember, even contactless with the phone, it's brilliant. Google has become a monopoly you can't do without.
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nick205
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| posted on 6/9/23 at 08:26 AM |
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robocog
Thanks for posting/explaing what you do, very handy and made me realise I should say what my current setup is.
I have a Western Digital 2TB NAS drive at home (3 yrs old now). It's wired to the WiFi router and provides shared web access storage for SWMBO
and myself (my 3 kids do their own thing). Western Digital provide an Android (and iPhone) app, which auto backs up images from mobiles (handy) and
allows you to store and access NAS files from your mobile.
It works well enough, but the 2TB is almost full and I'm getting tempted to move to an actual cloud solution now. Plus the content on the NAS
isn't actually backed up anywhere - I'm hoping if you use (pay for) an actual cloud solution the data is held/backed-up in more than a
single location.
Hopefully that gives a bit fuller picture of where I'm at and looking to go.
[Edited on 6/9/23 by nick205]
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Slimy38
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| posted on 6/9/23 at 04:11 PM |
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I went for a Microsoft Office family sub, mainly because I also needed office. £50 a year (or sometimes cheaper from Amazon/Argos), and it gives me a
6 user licence for Office, each licences comes with 1Tb of Onedrive storage. While the 1Tb split is a little inconvenient, I just partition my backups
in the same way. I have 2Tb of 'long term' backups, then 1Tb for more frequently accessed stuff. The other 3 accounts are for the family to
use (although none of them are using more than a few Mb so I could always add a folder of other stuff to use up the space).
I've not yet found a cheaper method of 'known quantity' online storage. Sure there's Megaupload and all those services, but at
least you'd hope Onedrive is reasonably safe.
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SteveWalker
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| posted on 6/9/23 at 04:17 PM |
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I just back up the important files from my server to external hard-drives. I don't worry about recorded films and the like.
You could simply increase the disk capacity of your existing NAS (assuming it can take more or bigger disks).
One very cheap and secure way to backup your data is simply to place a USB hard-disk, connected to a co-operative family member's or
friend's router, with a VPN allowing you access only to that disk and the disk being encrypted so they cannot read it. Thus providing you with
cheap, accessible, off-site backup.
Years ago, two friends of mine provided backup for each other's machines in such a way.
Cloud services have been known to lose people's data.
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nick205
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| posted on 7/9/23 at 08:46 AM |
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quote:
Originally posted by SteveWalker
I just back up the important files from my server to external hard-drives. I don't worry about recorded films and the like.
You could simply increase the disk capacity of your existing NAS (assuming it can take more or bigger disks).
One very cheap and secure way to backup your data is simply to place a USB hard-disk, connected to a co-operative family member's or
friend's router, with a VPN allowing you access only to that disk and the disk being encrypted so they cannot read it. Thus providing you with
cheap, accessible, off-site backup.
Years ago, two friends of mine provided backup for each other's machines in such a way.
Cloud services have been known to lose people's data.
My existing Western Digital NAS is a closed box, with no scope for adding drives or increasing the existing drive capacity. IIRC it cost me in the
order 0f £160 3 years ago. To date it's worked without issue, just feel it's probably time to move on now. I may well keep it running for
streaming music from as that works well.
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coyoteboy
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| posted on 7/9/23 at 12:36 PM |
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I have a 4Tb drive on my machine, this is backed up to a 4Tb NAS with parallel RAID, this is then backed up to the 1Tb OneDrive I get with my
Microsoft office family subscription (only a subset to be fair). This seems safe enough for me and costs relatively little.
I run an owncloud on a VPS in the USA but storage is expensive in almost every case other than Google and OneDrive - some of the more niche companies
that offer cheaper are wayyyy too no-name for my liking and I expect they'll vanish.
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SteveWalker
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| posted on 8/9/23 at 11:54 PM |
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My home server is currently providing 14TB of storage, in a combination of RAID 1 (2 x 6TB drives), RAID 5 (4 x 2TB drives), combined into a single
volume of 12TB and a separate 2TB of RAID 1 (2 x 2TB). I only back up about 3TB of the 12TB volume, as anything else is replaceable (copies of CDs and
DVDs that we still have), not important (TV recordings) or are copies of my student son's files, so he has his own master copies where he is.
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