Personal cloud storage

dixierip

Okay I'm new to the whole cloud storage option. To date I have all my pictures and music saved onto 2 external hard drives. Just wondering what do people find the best option for cloud storage to safe guard the like. I'd be interested in other peoples experiences?

Antar Bolaeisk

I've found Livedrive to be quite good (although the initial uploade was painful), the pricing per year is okay for unlimited backup.

Another interesting option might be something like owncloud but you're then looking at having another computer or even hosted VM running to sync the files to.

Merl1n

dropbox skydrive and google drive offer free space and sell you additional space

Khannie

I'm using mega.co.nz. Still beta, but improving rapidly. 50g free.

RodgersLFC

I have 25GB free on Skydrive which is more than enough for what I use it for. Mega.co.nz is pretty good with their 50GB free space, but I'm not sure if I'd trust Kim Dotcom with my personal stuff!

Squeaky the Squirrel

RodgersLFC wrote: »

but I'm not sure if I'd trust Kim Dotcom with my personal stuff!

Trust No one.

Encrypt.

Khannie

Yeah, you can encrypt whatever you upload too. I'm eagerly awaiting the ability to mount my mega drive as a local drive (like dropbox) and a bump in my upload speeds (COME OOONNNNN the FTTC!). That way you can encrypt / decrypt on the fly.

sink

After what happened to megaupload, I'm not sure mega is the safest place for your valuable files.

Irish Steve

At the risk of being snarled at from every direction, can I pour a huge bucket of ICED water on this cloud concept.

It is nothing new, it just wasn't called cloud 40 years ago, and back then, the principles were very straight forward and clear. Multiple generations of backup were ESSENTIAL, to protect the integrity of the data, AND to protect the integrity of the ACCESS to the data. Yes, companies like Google are big, but that doesn't stop them from having major problems with hardware, or at worst, from going out of business. What's worse than losing your data? Losing your data AND access to the vendor specific programs that access that data, if you have keot a local backup, (which you should), it's also ESSENTIAL to make sure you also have local copies of the program that gets you into that data, and that local copy needs to be tested without any form of on line access, to ensure that it will work if the fertiliser hits the fan.

We saw not that long ago how badly it can go wrong when Royal Bank of Scotland, and it's other trading names were hit by a hardware fault. How long did it take them to get back to stable and accurate up to date information? For ever, and I will put money on it that there were still errors in the end result, but we're not getting to hear about them.

If you were running a weekly payroll, and the data is in the cloud, and for some reason, you can't get access to the data for a few weeks, will your staff be happy to be told, "sorry, we can't pay you this week, the computers are down". I don't think so.

In the same vein, if the data AND the application are all "in the cloud", and for some reason, your specific cloud is no longer accessible, maybe because the company providing it has gone bust, how do you recover?

Depending on the nature of the failure, you may not be able to recover, or the costs of recovery may be very high, and involve long and expensive legal proceedings to get that result.

So, what am I saying?

I am saying, and this is based on over 40 years of working in and with the computer industry at the highest levels,

BE VERY CAUTIOUS AND SUSPICIOUS OF ANY CLOUD OFFERING, ESPECIALLY IF IT LOOKS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

NEVER TRUST THE ONLY COPY OF IMPORTANT DATA TO THE CLOUD

ALWAYS MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ACCESSIBLE AND WORKING BACKUPS THAT CAN RECOVER YOUR DATA AND APPLICATIONS

A cloud is water vapour in suspension, and it is by nature very nebulous, and it can appear and disappear with frightening speed. The same can be true of your computer information and critical data if you have not been very careful with how you have set up and validated your use of the cloud.

BE VERY CAREFUL, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH WHEN IT COMES TO DATA SECURITY AND INTEGRITY, regardless of how big the company is.

Microsoft's Operating Systems for PC's and the like come with a "health warning" which states that they are not qualified or approved for mission critical applications such as nuclear station operations, Air traffic control, and medical device operations, and the reason for that is simple, the quality control testing required to use a system in these high risk environments are much more stringent and demanding than Microsoft can meet. If they don't want you to use their operating systems for critical applications, where does that leave Cloud Computing? In a very dangerous place, and before you commit to the Cloud, make sure that you understand very clearly what you have committed to, regretting it after the event may not save your data, or (in the wrong circumstances) your company.

In the 40 years of computing, I have had the task of performing 3 disaster recoveries, on varying size systems, and for varying size companies. In all 3 cases, the only reason we were able to get them back trading with valid information was because they had valid strategies in place to ensure that their critical data had been safeguarded in multiple ways, and in one case, in multiple geographic locations. The recoveries took time, in one case close on 9 months before all the functions were fully restored, the insurance they had for such an event was the only reason they were able to continue trading, and they were a big company, turning over £!5 million per annum over 30 years ago.

It can happen, make sure that using the cloud is not a cop out suggested by a bean counting accountant who has not looked at the implications of the real cost of the cloud failing. It's deceptive, as it looks cheap and easy, and reduces the in house effort to manage your most important resource, your data.

Yes, this is about personal cloud storage, but your personal data, photos, videos, and the like may well be irreplaceable, so the same principle applies to personal data as applies to corporate data. It needs to be protected to a high level to ensure that access to it cannot be lost.

If you have been even slightly uncomfortable reading this, then you may indeed be at risk, don't ignore that discomfort, there IS a reason for it.

Khannie

sink wrote: »

After what happened to megaupload, I'm not sure mega is the safest place for your valuable files.

Works on an entirely different principle. Has lots of "real" investors. Actually hope it does well for itself.