Any cloud storage experts in here? What's the best setup?

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avatar33

e-Hustler
Dec 5, 2009
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Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive, iCloud, BackBlaze, Carbonite, SpiderOak, etc... It's a very confusing landscape out there. I'm trying to find the best setup to ensure data safety/sync across my PC, laptop and devices ...

I have been using both DropBox and Google Drive for years but just to share data with other people. I recently started playing around with OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) that is now included with Windows 8.1. I'm really not an expert in cloud storage so I don't know if I'm taking full advantage of the features.

I realized that 90% of my important data is in the My Documents folder. I sync this folder with my laptop manually using an old USB sync device I bought 5 years ago, but it's not practical and time consuming.

What's your guys' setup?

Suppose you're working on an important report for a client on MS Word, do you save it locally or directly to a cloud drive? If you save it locally, what do you do to ensure it'll be immediately synced or backed up? What cloud solution are you using? I'm not a fan of DropBox anymore because of the fact that they lied to users about security. Is there something that is just as robust but with a higher security level?
 


A lot of apps dump useless data in the my documents folder, making it a bad place to be your sync folder. (it used to be mine)

I have windows + apps on one physical harddrive and ALL data on my secondary physical harddrive. I always sync what's on my secondary drive in folders that only I touch. I use FreeFileSync | Free Security & Utilities software downloads at SourceForge.net - was recommended to me a while back. I have a complex mix of external drives, offsite drives and online backups - I use freefilesync to handle the comparison/sync, haven't had any issues with it.

Someone mentioned a while back, a self hosted cloud storage(owncloud I think) - that's the only thing that piqued my interest lately in terms of changing up my methods. Data loss sucks balls, especially when it's the 'art' kind that can't be replaced ... designs, photography etc..(happened to me around 5 years ago, didn't lose TOO much but enough to make me completely anal about backups)
 
Google Drive just dropped their price on 1 TB of storage to $9.99 a month blowing pretty much everyone else out of the water price wise Google Drive Goes On The Offensive | TechCrunch.

I've been using a Dropbox 100gb account to back up and share some of my files, in addition to WordPress backups and that sort of thing, but am probably going to move to Google. If anyone can chime in about how secure they think Drive is compared to other options, that would be helpful.

I have a pair of 1 TB drives mirrored for all my work and resource files. I don't store anything in my documents or on my OS disk except perhaps my Outlook PST file. The only thing of valuer on the OS disk might be config files for some programs I guess.

I built a home theater box about a year ago that has a couple more TB of storage, but it's not redundant and I don't back it up. I don't put a lot of value in pirated media.
 
Fatbat said:
Google Drive just dropped their price on 1 TB of storage to $9.99 a month blowing pretty much everyone else out of the water price wise Google Drive Goes On The Offensive | TechCrunch.

I've been using a Dropbox 100gb account to back up and share some of my files, in addition to WordPress backups and that sort of thing, but am probably going to move to Google. If anyone can chime in about how secure they think Drive is compared to other options, that would be helpful.

I have a pair of 1 TB drives mirrored for all my work and resource files. I don't store anything in my documents or on my OS disk except perhaps my Outlook PST file. The only thing of valuer on the OS disk might be config files for some programs I guess.

I built a home theater box about a year ago that has a couple more TB of storage, but it's not redundant and I don't back it up. I don't put a lot of value in pirated media.
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I'm a Dropbox user and I'm thinking of moving to Google Drive. Don't they have some scary TOS shit like they own all files? I have to read into it before signing up.
 
Either way you go, I wouldn't be sharing my files with Gorgle no matter how cheap it is.
I am sure they will be sleuthing through them and will have some nasty TOS.
You can be assured they will be scanning all your documents, along with other Gov't agencies. Gmail scanning, they scan these messages even if you don't open them.

If anyone knows of a storage service that works with encryption and has some morals I would love to know of a lead. Currently I am on dropbox and am open to changing.

Plaintiffs assert (from above link)

  • Google “reads” every Gmail from every user and . . .
  • Collects metadata from those emails and builds “user models” or “profiles” for advertising purposes
  • Uses “the collected content and metadata in combination with other data (such as web search history) to ―know where you are…know where you’ve been…[and] know what you’re thinking about.”
The “Content Onebox” mentioned above appears to be related to this notion of a consolidated view or user profile. Here’s more from the complaint:

  • Google’s collection of information from email messages to build User Models is secret, and Google does not disclose its secret user profiling to anyone.
  • Google never informs anyone that Google uses information contained within incoming email messages to Gmail users to build secret user models . . .
  • Google’s application of a user’s collected web (search) history with a user’s collected email message content and derivative data is secret, and Google does not disclose its secret user profiling to anyone.
 
Google drive used to have a MS Office connector plugin that would sync your word / excel within the application itself so even unsaved / incomplete docs were 'backed up'. Was handy until they stopped it.

I like the new Google pricing for 1Tb and I'm thinking a Truecrypt partition synced would be enough to prevent casual / easy snooping. I've not tried setting up encrypted partitions and using cloud based sync. If anyone here has done it already I'd massively appreciate some pointers though.
 
I've been doing some research all morning, and it seems MEGA (Kim Dotcom's new storage service) and SpiderOak are at the forefront when it comes to security. Both guarantee that no one else but you can decrypt your data. No sharing with authorities. I also found this Top 5 Maximum Security (Government-Proof) Backup Services in 2014 | Online Backup Guide but frankly I haven't tried any of them so I have no clue.

Now that I think about it I don't have any sensitive data so I don't know if it's worth it to pay more for some god-mode security level. My main priorities are speed and simplicity.
 
Paper_Chase said:
Thanks for the link. Have you used this before?
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I use it on a local machine. It can be a bit fickle setting it up, but it's pretty simple. I have been debating putting it on a server for true off site backup. You don't want to change the size of your "cloud" after it's setup. So give yourself as much storage as you think you'll ever need
 
dmnEPC said:
I use it on a local machine. It can be a bit fickle setting it up, but it's pretty simple. I have been debating putting it on a server for true off site backup. You don't want to change the size of your "cloud" after it's setup. So give yourself as much storage as you think you'll ever need
Click to expand...

Ok cool. Looks like the mobile apps are getting poor reviews tho :(
 
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