Cloud or PC back up. Remote PC access advice please

[MattH]

I'm after advice on PC back up.
What is the general consensus about storing / backing up in a cloud rather than on a bit of electronics in your own house?

I had a WD My Cloud 2TB which backs up everything on my PC and I can access it anywhere I can get internet.

Seemed a great idea, simple and easy to use.
it has now failed at 2 years 2 months (2 year warranty!! )

I am wary of getting another one, and PC World say they do their own cloud which is online storage on their servers for £30 a year for 2TB, or £90 for 5 years, with access anywhere with internet. 4TB is only £150 for 5 years and 10 devices can be backed up to it.
This is cheaper than my failed WD My Cloud which was £130 and I dont then have to buy any hardware.

What do you all do these days for PC back up?

[Pete]

Buy a 1TB zip drive.

[Dave81]

Buy a 1TB zip drive.

Exactly what I did last year 1TB Samsung External Hard Drive from Amazon was under 60 quid.

Its got all my family photo's on it (pain in the ass when changing phones, so an easy solution), and also 10 years worth of my work and info for my career.

Stays in the bed side table..............

[morgan]

Being highly paranoid I avoid cloud - who the heck is cloud anyway ? Some faceless corporation that now has ALL my data and pics. Hmm. No thanks. - but of course this leaves you open to 'on premise failures' e.g. a fire. So I have 2 external drives which I alternate.
Yes, its a manual exercise to do the backup at the frequency you desire, but on the upside only you have the data and you can do it in native format.

Pays yer money, takes choice. Cloud is easy but once its out there you can never be sure its private. Even if you move providers your data will still exist somewhere else.
On premise is a pain as you have to think about it.

Your WD pers cloud is somewhere between the two.

Is it just a HDD failure ? Replace the drive. It probably wont let you format larger but it shouldnt have died after 2 yrs.

[Super Sloth]

Another vote for a stand alone TB drive.

A neighbour of mine has 2... one in the house and one in the car incase the house catches fire!

The trouble with these online storage sites is that everything is out there in the ether. No matter how much spiel they give you about it being safe - it isn't completely.
A few years back there was a story in the news about a handful of z list "celebrities" who had been sending one another dirty pictures of themselves. Somehow the mobile network got hacked and these images made it out into the public domain.

If someone were to hack into one of these cloud things it wouldn't take very long to harvest enough information to enable them to access things like bank accounts, email, pictures of your kids or that hemi ‘cuda you've got locked away that you've never told anyone about for fear of it getting nicked?

It's just not worth the risk IMHO and the idea makes me feel really uncomfortable. I believe that if you don't want something getting out into the public domain then it's stands to reason that you should never put it out there and trust (and hope?) 3rd parties will guard it for you.

That's just my 2c on it anyway...

[MattH]

Thanks for the advice.
What I like about the WD thing was being able to access it from anywhere, even though it is sitting on my desk at home. I too have reservations of storing MY data on someone else's server somewhere in the world.
A couple of people I know have NAS systems, I think the WD My Cloud is some thing like that but I'm not too sure.
What i do know is they can access their music at home and play it at work or anywhere they have internet.
They can also access photos etc remotely which can be useful sometimes.

[Dave999]

Your My cloud was a NAS with web interface that you made secure and accessible over the net


few ways to skin that cat


http://www.howtogeek.com/208030/how-to- ... age-drive/


I particularly like the massive hard drive plugged into a 24 quid raspberry pie


Dave

[RobTwin]

A neighbour of mine has 2... one in the house and one in the car in case the house catches fire!
..

...or in case the car gets stolen!

[Super Sloth]

A neighbour of mine has 2... one in the house and one in the car in case the house catches fire!
..

...or in case the car gets stolen!

Funnily enough Nicola asked him that question. His face went white and he didn't have an answer so I'd imagine there's a 3rd knocking around somewhere, now?

He's a bit of an odd chap... If he goes on holiday he had to draw up an itemised spreadsheet on excel of everything he needs to pack in his suitcase. It has to be packed a month in advance and checked at least twice before they go against his spreadsheet.
Nice old guy, but very very strange!

[Bryan]

The other thing with the cloud, if you have no internet connection for whatever reason you cant access any of your stuff. Extrenal hardrive all the way for me.

[lough3969]

If you hare storing on a hard drive then I suggest a RAID or mirrored system. Also consider solid state drives... Expensive though.

[adrianp]

Ok, so I'll be odd man out here. If you do want to look at a Cloud option try these guys:

http://www.code42.com/crashplan/

Always rates well in Cloud storage comparison articles I've read, client that'll work on OSX and windows, your data is encrypted as it's stored, family packs available, software just runs in the background uploading the files you selected that have changed.

Takes a while to upload everything the first time you install it (depending on how much your backing up). Do take into consideration your ISP package - if you're on a data cap each month this could cause you to push that limit, again depending on how much you backup.

I like the idea of off site, someone else's hardware and their problem if it fails, no worries about theft, fire etc.

Cost wise I think buying your own hardware will eventually come out in front as cheaper considering £ per Mb of storage now days.

There's a free 30 demo so you can try before you buy.

Just something to consider.

adrian.

[cadboy]

External HD for me too, try my best to leave the cloud where they are....away from me.