The cloud

[RossMAN]

Gonna buy a portable usb WD passport to back up files now.

Now would be a great time as they're currently on sale.

 

[Carson Dyle]

My slow 2mb internet connection makes the cloud more or less useless for me.

Gonna buy a portable usb WD passport to back up files now.

Unless you're trying to store large media files, 2 Mbps will work just fine to keep things in sync. Try Dropbox and see for yourself. Store Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, text files, photos, PDFs, software installation files. You'll have more than enough bandwidth. Again, it's a poor substitute for a proper backup solution, so you're going to want to get that external drive anyway.

 

[ronbo613]

I have thousands of hours invested in my digital photos, scanned photos and videos, if they were lost, I could never get them back, so I have backups and then backups for the backups.
I have 9TB of onboard backup(mainly WD Enterprise HDs) and a 4TB Synology NAS in my office. I have another 10 TB or so of bare drives and drives in enclosures that is stored off site. I don't use "the cloud", I use "the garage"; a brick and steel storage unit that not only holds my data backups, but my fishing gear, snowboards, surfboards and anything else that doesn't fit in my house.
Sorry, the internet is a great thing, but I don't trust it enough to store my most valuable data there.

 

[corkyg]

... Apart from some things like irreplaceable photos and a handful of documents like my birth certificate (kept in a safe-deposit box anyway) I can't think of many things more valuable to me than those files.

You are really in good shape if you already have a SD box. It's very easy to place storage media for those files in that box. That's safer than "the cloud." An "in addition to" would be ultra safe.

 

[KentState]

The "cloud" does provide a good dumping ground for backups, but it always seems to come with restrictions or prohibitive costs. Anything that will allow NAS backups either offers not enough free space, expensive limited space or out of sight mass storage. Programs like Carbonite and Mozy used to be a good deal, but now have slow upload speeds, restrictions on size or OS. For example, if you have a home AD domain or run Windows Server, Mozy makes you go with a business plan. There is always Amazon S3, but then you have to find a quality third party app to manage files, use Amazon's limited interface or script everything out.

For now, I'm going with a NAS using RAID 6, externally connected HDs for daily backups and a remote NAS using RAID 10 for daily backups. The one time investment was heavy, but I should have years of local and remote mass storage.

 

[Doomer]

The Cloud is proof that there is an abundance of stupid people in this world.

 

[Lorne]

The Cloud is proof that there is an abundance of stupid people in this world.

Nahh, It does have a use but secure back up aint one of them.

 

[Meractik]

http://www.spideroak.com/ Has been recommended to me by a ATOTer, I love it.

 

[BFG10K]

Id like to share with you all THAT.....after more than ten years of computer hobbying....and many crashes and lost data, that the only way to store your data safely and securely.... is by using an online file storage facility.

Kind of like the Megaupload users?

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2327022

Whoops.

 

[jimhsu]

Will give +1 to crashplan, again. Source-based encryption is an absolute priority (which Crashplan (w/ the password or the private key settings), Spideroak, and some other solutions do). For things that are extremely sensitive (i.e. monetary value), I'd eschew even that and go with Truecrypt, with a physically secured key (i.e. safety deposit box, one that doesn't touch the internet). If you have data valuable enough to actually require that level of security, I do hope you already have a backup solution.

The lack of security is not a problem endemic to the cloud (although the consequences of the scale of data breaches, is). Laptops get stolen by the thousands every day, flash drives go missing, scribbled passwords inevitably become lost, etc. Securing your data is not up to your cloud provider, it's up to you. It's also up to you to know what and how your cloud provider is handling security.

 

[jimhsu]

Those doing offsite backups, please consider geographic effects as well. For instance, due to me living in a hurricane prone zone (Texas), and seeing what hurricanes such as Ike and Sandy can bring, I'm not confident in an offsite solution anywhere within a few hours around here. Same applies for California (earthquakes), the Midwest (tornadoes), etc. PLEASE consider where you're living before concluding that an offsite solution at your office, 30 minutes away, etc is "enough".

Another tidbit: consumer-grade fire safes (for paper) are NOT SECURE for hard drives (which get dangerously close to the Curie point well before paper burns at 451). You need something like this: http://www.mediavaulthd.com/.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I rather have my own cloud, and be in full total control of my data. I can also do my own offsite backups.



It's also accessible at speeds up to 1000mbps and it does not cost me anything other than the one time cost of the hardware and the ongoing (fairly low compared to equivalent online service) cost of electricity.

 

[Zxian]

The "cloud" does provide a good dumping ground for backups, but it always seems to come with restrictions or prohibitive costs. Anything that will allow NAS backups either offers not enough free space, expensive limited space or out of sight mass storage. Programs like Carbonite and Mozy used to be a good deal, but now have slow upload speeds, restrictions on size or OS. For example, if you have a home AD domain or run Windows Server, Mozy makes you go with a business plan. There is always Amazon S3, but then you have to find a quality third party app to manage files, use Amazon's limited interface or script everything out.

For now, I'm going with a NAS using RAID 6, externally connected HDs for daily backups and a remote NAS using RAID 10 for daily backups. The one time investment was heavy, but I should have years of local and remote mass storage.

Crashplan. I'm running it on all of my Windows 7 machines and Server 2008R2 (and yes, I'm running my own domain). I have a friend running hers on OSX, using my server as a destination. I also have a friend running it on his Synology NAS (you'll want a NAS with at least 512MB of RAM). Under the hood, the Crashplan software is just Java code.

No other cloud provider offers the software for free that lets you handle your own backups if you don't want to use their cloud storage. As long as it's for home use and not for a business, there's no restriction on the OS it's installed on. There's also no file size limit with Crashplan.

 

[jimhsu]

Crashplan. I'm running it on all of my Windows 7 machines and Server 2008R2 (and yes, I'm running my own domain). I have a friend running hers on OSX, using my server as a destination. I also have a friend running it on his Synology NAS (you'll want a NAS with at least 512MB of RAM). Under the hood, the Crashplan software is just Java code.

No other cloud provider offers the software for free that lets you handle your own backups if you don't want to use their cloud storage. As long as it's for home use and not for a business, there's no restriction on the OS it's installed on. There's also no file size limit with Crashplan.

Yea, one of the disadvantages of Crashplan is its disproportionate memory usage compared to other cloud providers. On a 2M+ files backup set, I basically have 2GB of memory dedicated to the crashplan process. Heard that native (non-Java) clients are in the works, but haven't heard from them lately about how that's coming along.

 

[Red Squirrel]

So do these cloud systems require you use proprietary software? What if you aren't running Windows, and what if you want to automate/script stuff? The only thing I could see myself using these services for is to supplement my existing backups and I'd want to be able to use rsync/SSH.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I don't know how the other cloud services work, but to me Dropbox is really more of a syncing solution than one of "storing" things in the cloud. I script weekly Dropbox backups. Don't know if this is necessary, as Dropbox claims to offer prior versions of files, but I've never tested that functionality. You can also easily script moving things into or out of your local Dropbox, and the changes get sync'd on all systems. You don't have to work with any remote files, as the changes are pushed out transparently by the software.

 

[Zxian]

So do these cloud systems require you use proprietary software? What if you aren't running Windows, and what if you want to automate/script stuff? The only thing I could see myself using these services for is to supplement my existing backups and I'd want to be able to use rsync/SSH.

With Crashplan, yes, you are using their proprietary software. As I said before, it runs on any operating system. Windows, OSX, and Linux (there's no official BSD support, but you can hack around that if you really want). There really isn't much need to automate or script things with Crashplan, as it's meant to be a set-it-and-forget-it solution. You tell it what local files to backup, and what destinations to backup to. It handles the rest (you can set the backup frequency and how far in the past to keep deleted files) and will notify you by email if your systems haven't been able to reach their backup destinations for three days (the default - again, you can change this setting). If you're setting a system to be used as a backup destination, you specify where the backup archives are stored.

I've gone through the hassle of setting up my own rsync/ssh/mail cronjobs before, but to me this is a completely painless solution that is OS independent. You also get the benefit of encryption and deduplication for free.


There's no reason why you couldn't install Crashplan alongside your existing backup solution for the time being to evaluate it. Again, the software is free to use. The only thing you ever pay for is to backup to their datacenters.

 

[Zxian]

I don't know how the other cloud services work, but to me Dropbox is really more of a syncing solution than one of "storing" things in the cloud. I script weekly Dropbox backups. Don't know if this is necessary, as Dropbox claims to offer prior versions of files, but I've never tested that functionality. You can also easily script moving things into or out of your local Dropbox, and the changes get sync'd on all systems. You don't have to work with any remote files, as the changes are pushed out transparently by the software.

That being said, I wouldn't trust any sensitive data on Dropbox. They've had a few security breaches before when it comes to public access of otherwise private files.

For the convenient syncing solution, it's great. For backup or archiving, I wouldn't rely on it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

With Crashplan, yes, you are using their proprietary software. As I said before, it runs on any operating system. Windows, OSX, and Linux (there's no official BSD support, but you can hack around that if you really want). There really isn't much need to automate or script things with Crashplan, as it's meant to be a set-it-and-forget-it solution. You tell it what local files to backup, and what destinations to backup to. It handles the rest (you can set the backup frequency and how far in the past to keep deleted files) and will notify you by email if your systems haven't been able to reach their backup destinations for three days (the default - again, you can change this setting). If you're setting a system to be used as a backup destination, you specify where the backup archives are stored.

I've gone through the hassle of setting up my own rsync/ssh/mail cronjobs before, but to me this is a completely painless solution that is OS independent. You also get the benefit of encryption and deduplication for free.


There's no reason why you couldn't install Crashplan alongside your existing backup solution for the time being to evaluate it. Again, the software is free to use. The only thing you ever pay for is to backup to their datacenters.

That's good to know. If I had the bandwidth I'd probably consider it as a supplementary backup solution on top of what I have already. You can never have too much backup. As it is though my only real offsite solution is a rsync job with very specific files/small folders all under 1GB and for everything else it's sneakernet(tm) to the post office lock box. :biggrin:

 

[alangrift]

Cloud is great for enterprise if lots of people are working on something. But for your own work I wouldn't recommend it.

 

[Railgun]

If it's for any enterprise, I wouldn't recommend it at all. There are enterprise solutions, like share point to address that. In addition no company should have their data out there in that regard anyway.

 

[Berne]

Hi All,

So many replies , that's great, Ive learned a lot on the subject thanks to you all .

Berne :thumbsup:

 

[Golgatha]

Hi All,

Id like to share with you all THAT.....after more than ten years of computer hobbying....and many crashes and lost data, that the only way to store your data safely and securely.... is by using an online file storage facility.

It can be done for free.....just search for free online data storage.....

Now...when your computer crashes with all you data lost OR....your computer is stolen....OR....your house is victim to a Tornado, YOU will still have all your data safely stored in the CLOUD.

Hope this helps many,

Berne

Even though this is a necro thread, here are my thoughts anyway.


Computer crashes - You should have multiple copies of data.

Computer stolen - Offsite backup + always use encryption (I use TrueCrypt with obnoxiously long passwords and keyfiles on all drives).

House victim to fire/tornado/etc - Offsite backup.

Data "safely stored in the cloud" is an oxymoron. The only safe data is heavily encrypted data you have complete control over.