Cloud Storage?

[149motorsports]

What is a good company to use for storing files on a cloud service? Looking to store all my flexi files, pictures,ect on this service. thanks!

 

[jimdtg]

Are GDrive and OneDrive not enough?

 

[149motorsports]

Are GDrive and OneDrive not enough?

I havent looked to deep but most of the ones I saw did not offer much for free. Are those ones 1 tera?

 

[Attila Nagy]

What is a good company to use for storing files on a cloud service? Looking to store all my flexi files, pictures,ect on this service. thanks!

Setup your ownCloud. any old computer can do, with a large harddrive.

 

[GaSouthpaw]

Setup your ownCloud. any old computer can do, with a large harddrive.

While I agree with this as a local solution, and do this myself, I also pay for Carbonite- which constantly backs up my personal laptops and desktop. If one of them craps out, I can still retrieve files.
I do use Google as well, but only for temporary storage, or transferring files to the customers I freelance for.

 

[Attila Nagy]

While I agree with this as a local solution, and do this myself, I also pay for Carbonite- which constantly backs up my personal laptops and desktop. If one of them craps out, I can still retrieve files.
I do use Google as well, but only for temporary storage, or transferring files to the customers I freelance for.

My ownCloud works from anywhere not only local. It sync my files to all of my computers, and can Share Client's folder for upload or Download Large files.

 

[GaSouthpaw]

My ownCloud works from anywhere not only local. It sync my files to all of my computers, and can Share Client's folder for upload or Download Large files.

My mistake. I didn't realize that ownCloud is (from what I see on their site) a way to file share/collaborate. What I don't see there (perhaps I'm missing it) is the backup option. What I mean is, if you're still storing the files on a local computer, and ownCloud allows sharing, but retrieves/writes files to that computer, you'd still seem to be SOL if that computer crashes/dies. Does that service include actual cloud (offsite) backup? It looks like a pretty good option for storage/collaboration, at least- but the off site storage/back up is what I took the OP to be looking for.

 

[mfatty500]

I use dropbox with 2TB of space for $11.00 a month.

 

[Notarealsignguy]

what about a NAS with cloud backup?

 

[tulsagraphics]

Not just "if" but "when" drives fail. Remember that all drives will fail at some point -- 100% guaranteed to die -- whether it's a few years, 5 years, etc. So if you decide to go with the local backup option, make sure your server is configured as RAID 1 (drive replication). Avoid the temptation to use cheap drives. Not worth the risk. Most of the typical "box store" drives have cheaper components and terrible QA... which means higher failure rates.
Note: RAID 1 configuration = When a single drive fails you can replace the bad drive and it will automatically rebuild / restore the data without any fuss. It's a great way to go.

Plan for the future. However much you space you need now (1TB?), get 8 to 16TB (or however much you can afford). Yes, that sounds like a lot, but consider that RAID 1 is a drive replication configuration, which means 16TB only gets you ~8TB of usable storage. And who knows how much space you need several years down the road. Increasing hard drive space on an existing NAS "can" be a headache.
This is why an offsite backup solution is recommended (e.g. Carbonite) in addition to your local storage.. Personally, I use 2 local storage systems (Synology DiskStation and a Dell Blade rack server -- which is crazy overkill)), as well as an upper tier plan on Dropbox so all my files are synced across multiple computers at multiple locations. You don't need to go "that" far with it, but the more redundancy you have, the easier it is to recover your files.

Note: When exploring local NAS storage options, be sure to use drives designed specifically for NAS (Network Attached Storage).

The next question to ask is "which drives are the most reliable?". Glad you asked!. Do not look at Google/Amazon reviews or any of that B.S. Online reviews are utterly useless for this type of application. Instead, check out the BackBlaze reports. (they're a backup solution company that provides reports on all the drives they use, error rate, failure rate, etc). so you can see the actual real world performance of drives that see a lot of abuse. Data storage companies know better than anyone which drives really hold up.

Backblaze Drive Stats for Q3 2023

Read the quarterly and lifetime failure rates for Backblaze hard drives.

www.backblaze.com

Hope that helps. Good luck!

 

[netsol]

Not just "if" but "when" drives fail. Remember that all drives will fail at some point -- 100% guaranteed to die -- whether it's a few years, 5 years, etc. So if you decide to go with the local backup option, make sure your server is configured as RAID 1 (drive replication). Avoid the temptation to use cheap drives. Not worth the risk. Most of the typical "box store" drives have cheaper components and terrible QA... which means higher failure rates.
Note: RAID 1 configuration = When a single drive fails you can replace the bad drive and it will automatically rebuild / restore the data without any fuss. It's a great way to go.

Plan for the future. However much you space you need now (1TB?), get 8 to 16TB (or however much you can afford). Yes, that sounds like a lot, but consider that RAID 1 is a drive replication configuration, which means 16TB only gets you ~8TB of usable storage. And who knows how much space you need several years down the road. Increasing hard drive space on an existing NAS "can" be a headache.
This is why an offsite backup solution is recommended (e.g. Carbonite) in addition to your local storage.. Personally, I use 2 local storage systems (Synology DiskStation and a Dell Blade rack server -- which is crazy overkill)), as well as an upper tier plan on Dropbox so all my files are synced across multiple computers at multiple locations. You don't need to go "that" far with it, but the more redundancy you have, the easier it is to recover your files.

Note: When exploring local NAS storage options, be sure to use drives designed specifically for NAS (Network Attached Storage).

The next question to ask is "which drives are the most reliable?". Glad you asked!. Do not look at Google/Amazon reviews or any of that B.S. Online reviews are utterly useless for this type of application. Instead, check out the BackBlaze reports. (they're a backup solution company that provides reports on all the drives they use, error rate, failure rate, etc). so you can see the actual real world performance of drives that see a lot of abuse. Data storage companies know better than anyone which drives really hold up.

Backblaze Drive Stats for Q3 2023

Read the quarterly and lifetime failure rates for Backblaze hard drives.

www.backblaze.com

Hope that helps. Good luck!

do raid 5. AND BE SURE TO CONFIGURE FAILURE NOTIFICATION.
can't tell you how many offices we walk into where 1 drive is already bad. OR WHERE YOU FIND OUT THEY LOST EVERYTHING & It has been sending notification emails for almost a year!

or that ignore the expired credit card warning.

YOU WILL UNDERSTAND WHY PROTECTING YOUR DATA WS WORTH A FEW BUCKS AFTER IT ISGONE!!

 

[Dale D]

Ive been running what is now TruNas for artwork storage for 11 yrs and yes I had to swap out a few drives here and there, but with the correct redundancy set up in the drives, I plug and play another drive, and pick back up where I left off without issue.

 

[IsItFasst]

I played around with several options over the years but switched to Google Drive a couple of years ago since it made it easy to sync all my files between multiple computers. I wanted some off-site storage as if a flood or fire destroyed local computers I may as well file bankruptcy as tens of thousands of files would take too long to replace.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

What is a good company to use for storing files on a cloud service? Looking to store all my flexi files, pictures,ect on this service. thanks!

You. No one else will put the same value on your files compared to you. Have people really looked at the ToS of having your files hosted by someone else? Be surprised what permissions one has to give away with your files in order to be hosted on servers (and sometimes where those files are hosted have their own rules etc). This will more than likely translate to non NAS devices as the whole data backup is being built in to OSs as well. As a convenience feature of course.

Bare in mind, I've actually seen companies that used a 3rd party backup solution, get hammered via said 3rd party backup solution as the backdoor to get their data/files etc.

While it does put the responsibility of the user for more and more of this (which it is the user's data so....) and having to get some type of working knowledge, again, no one is really going to care about your data more.

 

[fixtureman]

I just bought a 2 terra Buffalo NAS had a 1 terra that was getting full. Bought it from Micro center for $120 including tax My old Buffalo was 12 years old

 

[victor bogdanov]

I have about 30TB set up on Synology NAS, (8) 16TB hard drives and any 2 can fail without data loss. Using WD Gold drives.

Also a copy of everything on True NAS at a different physical location but that one is only on 4 drives with single drive being able to fail.

Also everything backed up to Backblaze