Personal cloud storage

[Rich too]

I came across this whilst looking for a new laptop for the wife. obviously laptops get a lot more expensive with bigger hard drives, and then I came across personal cloud storage, and wonder whether you need all that storage on the laptop.

anyone using personal cloud storage? any recommendations? I like the idea of the 2 bay models which is effectively two hard drives mirroring each other so you get extra security in the event one fails.

[John F]

To be fair if you use a cloud storage medium then you have a fairly large amount of space but personal experience shows that online storage is only as good as the ability to get at your documents once you're in.

Maintenance issues caused me to be denied access to my account twice, direct access to my documents twice and a lack of internet access at times does compound things. (Dropbox and Mega)

If you don't make backups, obviously, you've got an issue if that laptop goes missing or the laptop just goes pop!

There are pro's and cons for each method but I use an external hard drive to make backups of my data, that way it'll always be there, won't go offline and won't go bang if the laptop does.

 

Edited By John F on 19/08/2015 13:06:14

Edited By John F on 19/08/2015 13:06:41

[Adrian Smith 1]

I use iCloud storage with my iMac so that everyone on your PC is stored in another place that can be accessed anywhere in the world via the web. You just use the iCloud password on the website you previously set up and go onto the internet (say with my iPad in another country) and all you docs and photos can be accessed. Certainly it's a good idea incase you PC crashes and then you can access your precious photos which are not lost. Alot of travelling business folk access there work docs remotely this way. So yes Rich2 it's a good idea.

[Rich too]

Thanks John, your was not a personal cloud used in the home then? I wonder if it makes much difference in use?

I was considering a portable HD before I came across the cloud based system - mmmm, perhaps I should go back to that. decisions decisions!

btw do you both with much storage on your laptop?

[Rich too]

cheers Adrian - I have never been I fan of any offsite storage (security and all that) and our server at work is backed up in house on tape drives, yes really! However, I can see the benefit for those that travel, and the personal cloud brings it into the home....

Edited By Rich2 on 19/08/2015 13:12:15

Edited By Rich2 on 19/08/2015 13:12:46

[kc]

Eventually when you have loaded up all your photos and files then you exceed the free limit and then they charge you to access your own files!

Read this up in 'Win 8.1 for Dummies' where they tell you how to stop photos from automatically loading onto Cloud. They suggest a USB hard disc as a backup instead. Many laptops dont have a CD/DVD drive now so you cannot backup files onto a cheap CD disk.

Bought a Lenovo G50 for a relative last week -has DVD rewriter and 1 Terrabyte for reasonable cost. Very impressed so far but hate Win 8.1....... the sales person at that big store that advertises on TV all the time tried to sell us a 32 gig USB stick for 35 pounds! Around the corner tesco sold us a 32 G Sandisk for 11 pounds! They are even cheaper on amazon.

[Rich too]

KC - I agree about general 3rd party cloud storage, but this is personal cloud. you have the hard drive cloud in your own home. £150 buys around 3T of storage, for you and your family to use. I just want to establish if it is a viable alternative to having a huge HD on the laptop.

[Steve T]

I have 'cloud' account and acces but still back up everything to an external HD, as a musician with literally hundreds of songs transcribed, recorded or just original version I cannot afford to lose material, some of which goes back to 1972! Back up to an external HD, I got 500gb for £25 !

[Rich too]

this type of thing:

**LINK**

not sure if this one has "2 bays"

**LINK**

[Rich too]

I think the idea is brilliant, but does it work well in practice?

[John F]

The thing with storage systems is that the more complex you make it the easier it is to make it not do something.

With an external HD you save what you want, when you want and, more importantly, have access whenever you like.

Cloud based storage is limited with some companies but Mega has a massive 50gb of storage as the free standard and can be encrypted for free too. **LINK**

To be honest, once you've backed going to and using your backup will probably be a small amount.

I used my cloud storage a lot, or tried to, as I was writing a literature review on disaster preparedness response and training. As a consequence I had a lot of data going backwards and forwards, as well as saving many research articles, as backups, most of which I needed access to.

Cloud storage simply was not giving me the access when I needed it so I had to do something else instead, hence the external HD option, which worked for me much, much better for me.

A home based cloud system is, basically, a wi-fi enabled HDD and in this day and age of the ever increasing demand on the sockets in the house I am a tight git and decided against it as it would be yet another thing in the house sucking juice.

Edited By John F on 19/08/2015 13:37:32

[Rich too]

Posted by John F on 19/08/2015 13:33:27:

A home based cloud system is, basically, a wi-fi enabled HDD and in this day and age of the ever increasing demand on the sockets in the house I am a tight git and decided against it as it would be yet another thing in the house sucking juice.

Edited By John F on 19/08/2015 13:37:32

I hear ya!

[Tim Mackey]

Is a wifi enabled HDD in your home not just a NAS drive?

Ive been using a 2TB Nas drive for years now, and much prefer it to cloud storage - Icve had no end of problems with "One Drive" on both win 8.1 and also on the new 10.

[Ian Jones]

Yep, a drive connected either by WiFi or cable to a home network (via a broadband router or seperate router) is a NAS (Network Accessible Storage). If it just connected to one computer by whatever means then it's an external hard drive.

A NAS often has additional features such as RAID if it hase multiple drives - this is the feature that gives you a good chance of recovering your data if one of the drives goes down. There are different types of raid with different requirements providing varying levels of recovery. Too much to go into here in a quick post at this time of night!

Cloud based systems (especially in communications) are supposed to be neural networks, again getting a bit far reaching for this time of night but these days cloud storage can be regarded as using a provider's space to store your files via the internet and a so called home based personal cloud is really nonsense, just jumping on the "cloud" name bandwagon - it's a NAS system.

I use two NAS boxes, 1 just for photos and the other to hold incremental backups of the photos NAS and the of data from my PC.

This setup sort answers the questions from the OP. That is no, you don't need a massive hard drive on computer, you can use external storage instead. However wherever you store your files you should still have a backup system. My preference so far as cloud storage goes would be to use it for backups and short term photo sharing rather than routine storage.

Ian

Edited By Ian Jones on 20/08/2015 01:42:54

[Rich too]

Thanks for the responses.

But that's all cloud is, a server in some remote location, hence personal cloud if it is a "server" in your own home - does the same thing, no?

Tim, why do you prefer NAS to cloud storage? Are you referring to public cloud?

Ian, you say that you use two NAS boxes, but then go on to say your preference would be to use cloud as back up and short term photo sharing - you mean public cloud? In a sense, your NAS boxes are "your" cloud?

Interesting, I assume the NAS works well for storage (since you both use it) - any recommendation on makes/models?

Much appreciated.

Rich

 

Edited By Rich2 on 20/08/2015 06:32:48

[Andy.I]

I back up my business systems using deduplication backup software writing every night to mirrored disks in an in-house NAS system, which in turn is backed up every weekend to cloud storage.

This allows me to restore a system to any point in time that a backup was performed, ie any weekday of the year. Every year I create a new backup file so I can roll back over the years as well. This covers us for eventualities such as accidental deletions or data corruption which can be recovered from the local backup, and disasters such as the offices burning down with restore from the cloud.

I would recommend for home use is a Synology NAS system; I have sold storage solutions as a living for the last 20-odd years, and they appear to be far more reliable than similar systems such as Qnap, Thecus etc.

As with most expenditure decisions, backup is a compromise of cost against risk. Just remember one thing: if you use free cloud storage then you have no comeback if your data is lost!

[John F]

Posted by Andy.I on 20/08/2015 07:22:47:

As with most expenditure decisions, backup is a compromise of cost against risk. Just remember one thing: if you use free cloud storage then you have no comeback if your data is lost!

The exact same is true for paid cloud storage. They state in T&C's for almost all cloud based solutions that they are not responsible for loss of data and you should back up your back ups!

[Rich too]

exactly why I want a home based system, with two HD's.

Andy, thanks, those systems aren't the cheapest! Most of them come without HD's!

[Peter Miller]

I have Dropbox and also Drive on my Chrome book. I don't use them very much,

I have a Clickfree hard drive that plugs into a USB socket and which will automatically back up multiple computers and laptops. This really does work. I have been using it for years.

Just plug it in every so often and it downloads all new files from whichever computer it is plugged into.

[Rich too]

Thanks Peter. Trouble is, I want to move away from storing data (photos etc) on laptops - they are hardly ever needed. My wife keeps running our of space on her laptop, and to keep increasing the capacity of each laptop you buy gets more and more expensive.

Plus with a separate HD, it does the back up functions as well - with two HD's.

[Andy.I]

Hi Rich2

NAS systems may not be cheap but they can be cheaper than losing your data!

Something else to consider is that there are different types of disk drives: desktop, nearline and server. Desktop drives are designed to run 8 hours a day while nearline and server drives are designed to run 24x7. I have seen so many desktop drives that have failed while running 24x7 that I don't use anything less than a nearline drive in any desktop PC which is left on overnight to perform automatic maintenance, or in a NAS system. Note that this applies to 3.5" drives - 2.5" drives are much more robust and there is little to differentiate between them.

I would be very wary of using a USB drives because they are so easy to damage and the enclosures and power supplies are usually cheaqp and shoddy. We use them in the business for things like data transfer where we don't want to flood a network, but we would never trust them for anything as important as backup.

However, at the end of the day you pays your money and takes your choice, if you'll excuse the cliches!

[Rich too]

Thanks Andy.

This looks good, great reviews and cheaper!

**LINK**

[Stevo]

Our laptops connect to a NAS (well acually a base spec PC with WIN7!) in the loft which carries two mirrored disks. All music photos and documents are there.

In turn, each share backs weekly up to ADrive , I get 250Gb storage for around $10 per month, so everything is now secure. I've stuck with ADrive as it supports FTP, SFTP, RSYNC plus even a desktop backup. Upload and download speeds are good.

It did pay dividends - the raid card in my old NAS went AWOL, one disk became wiped and we cound not get in to the other, no matter what utility we used! (EXT2... and so on). Built a PC, mirrored the drives and spent two days downloading. Never lost a thing, and that's around 10,000 MP3s...

[Rich too]

Just read another review:

**LINK**

I don't get it, it states:

"LaCie also allows you to use your NAS as part of a hybrid Cloud setup via its Wuala Cloud storage service. Similar to Dropbox, this service mounts a virtual drive on your PC, which gives you access to cloud storage provided by LaCie and also allows you to access any LaCie and Seagate NAS devices as well. The remote storage part of the service requires a subscription, although with your 2big you will get three months of 100GB storage for free, and then it's €9.99 (around £8) per month. "

I thought these devices gave you cloud from your own home without subscription?

I want to be able to plug one into our router, and then access around the house (or anywhere) via wifi. Isnt that how they work?

[Graham Back - Rclife.co.uk]

All depends on what and how much data you want to store/back up, I use dropbox and have the dropbox folder set as my root on my external hard drive, I keep all my work on this drive so when ever I save anything it automatically saves on dropbox, this has come in handy on a few occasions now.