Personal Cloud Storage: I get almost daily emails from WD about having my own Cloud. I have NAS for backup, but I've seldom accessed it from other than my main computer. I have two...

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I get almost daily emails from WD about having my own Cloud. I have NAS for backup, but I've seldom accessed it from other than my main computer. I have two Dells connected to it, but not the Mac's. I guess I'll do that eventually. Do any of you use your own cloud system and access it from different devices?

GC likes NIKON Loc: East Greenwich, Rhode Island

Hi Jerry, I have a Seagate Central 3TB Personal Cloud NAS. I am just getting started with it. For now I use it primarily to store my photos on and not automatic back ups. I supposedly can access it remotely over the internet as it has it's own IP address although I have not done so yet.

I currently access it from two PC's attached through my Cox Cable router network. I just bought a new laptop and assume I can access it through my WI FI also (haven't tried that yet).

bdk Loc: Sanibel Fl.

I use amazon photography cloud, $12.00 a year
unlimited uploads in just about all formats.
I can access it thru my phone, my laptop and my tablet.
so far no problems with it.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

bdk wrote:

I use amazon photography cloud, $12.00 a year
unlimited uploads in just about all formats.
I can access it thru my phone, my laptop and my tablet.
so far no problems with it.

Yeah, that's free with Prime. Their regular Cloud is also unlimited, but that's $60.yr.

jethro779 Loc: Tucson, AZ

jerryc41 wrote:

Yeah, that's free with Prime. Their regular Cloud is also unlimited, but that's $60.yr.

I have a WD My Cloud Mirror. I got it so I could access my photos when I visited with my siblings last summer. It is Nice for showing the photos already on it, but miserably slow to upload to from away from home. Sisters & brothers met in North Carolina last summer and I used it both ways with my MacBook Pro. The Mirror also lets you load the plex app on it and I can stream movies and tv shows saved to it to any of my devices.

bcmink Loc: Monona, WI

I own a couple Lacie (now Seagate) NAS arrays.
Rather than using the manufacturer's cloud account in order to obtain a DNS address, I choose to keep an inexpensive DynDns.org account which allows me to set up dozens of fixed DNS addresses that allow me to access as many cloud devices as I choose to deploy. The benefit of having your own DNS server is you control the domain names and they can all be fixed and under your control versus dynamic and under someone else's control.

http://dyn.com/remote-access/

jerryc41 wrote:

I get almost daily emails from WD about having my own Cloud. I have NAS for backup, but I've seldom accessed it from other than my main computer. I have two Dells connected to it, but not the Mac's. I guess I'll do that eventually. Do any of you use your own cloud system and access it from different devices?

Indi Loc: L. I., NY, Palm Beach Cty when it's cold.

bdk wrote:

I use amazon photography cloud, $12.00 a year
unlimited uploads in just about all formats.
I can access it thru my phone, my laptop and my tablet.
so far no problems with it.

Is there a difference between Prime Unlimited and the Amazon Cloud for $12/year?
My Prime is limited to JPEG & GIF except that I'm allowed 5 GB "other" including RAW & Tiff, video, and other files.
Once I go over the 5 GB limit for "other" I can't upload any more.
I know this because I started to upload all my images in all my folders and I got a message that said I had reached my limit.
Now I've been culling out anything but JPEG & GIFs before I upload and I'm up to 160 plus GBs.

Capture48 Loc: Arizona

jerryc41 wrote:

I get almost daily emails from WD about having my own Cloud. I have NAS for backup, but I've seldom accessed it from other than my main computer. I have two Dells connected to it, but not the Mac's. I guess I'll do that eventually. Do any of you use your own cloud system and access it from different devices?

Yes I access mine from offsite on occasion, but not often. Question is does a NAS make a good BU, I say "It depends" I have a 12TB NAS. But you mention it specifically for Backups. I'm putting this out there not necessarily for you but others who read.

If the NAS is your only BU, it does not make a great BU solution. The same is true for a personal cloud. The reason why are numerous but here are a few. Personal clouds/NAS are normally in the same place as the files you are trying to backup:IE your home network. They suffer from the same issues as your computer with accidental file deletion, fire, theft, flood all the disasters that can happen at home. Not to mention viruses etc...

If on the other hand you use a NAS in conjunction with off-site backup, I think the right one makes a great addition. Mine allows me to ftp, or sftp in from offsite if needed. It offers RAID redundancy so no one drive failure will affect my data.

Capture48 Loc: Arizona

bcmink wrote:

I own a couple Lacie (now Seagate) NAS arrays. br... (show quote)

Many NAS allow SFTP traffic in, but it has to be set up on your router to pass the traffic to the correct place. A little tech'y but easier than maintaining a DNS server. The problem with maintaining your own DNS server is if you lose it for any reason, hard drive crash, NIC failure or any of a dozen other issues, none of your devices are reachable

bcmink Loc: Monona, WI

Tend to agree with Capture48.

I use two RAID arrayed NAS's as primary back up but they are not in the same place. One is attached to my LAN and one at a brother-in-law's place that I access via WAN. I back up to both via SFTP using incremental backups and obviously a utility that allows one to perform FTP/SFTP incremental backups over WAN. So, if my own network is destroyed, stolen, corrupted I have a second NAS with redundant drives in another location. At any given time I have no less than 6 copies of anything and everything including partitions on RAID drives that contain a clone of the boot drive for each computer I own.

I access files outside of my LAN with some frequency, which I can do from anywhere I have web access

Capture48 wrote:

Yes I access mine from offsite on occasion, but no... (show quote)

mallen1330 Loc: Chicago western suburbs

The main advantage of using an Internet (cloud) storage service is that it is not in your home. If your home or office blows up, you lose everything except what is backed up off-site. I use Mozy and Carbonite. This in addition to my external drives and DVDs.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

GC likes NIKON wrote:

....I supposedly can access it remotely over the internet as it has it's own IP address although I have not done so yet. ...

I have a WD NAS capable of this also, however there is no way that I am going to expose my home network to the internet any more than I already do simply by being on line with my browser.

bcmink Loc: Monona, WI

BobHartung wrote:

I have a WD NAS capable of this also, however there is no way that I am going to expose my home network to the internet any more than I already do simply by being on line with my browser.

Well that is what redundant firewalls, blind port forwarding, proxies and complex logins/passwords are for. I have NAS arrays accessible to the web for a 15 years, 24x7x365 and never had an intrusion.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

bcmink wrote:

Well that is what redundant firewalls, blind port forwarding, proxies and complex logins/passwords are for. I have NAS arrays accessible to the web for a 15 years, 24x7x365 and never had an intrusion.

Good for you. However, not everyone has the skills to set up a complex firewall as you seem to have. So to suggest this approach for those of us who do not have the skills does limit your advice to a select few.

I'm not dissin' you, just saying that we all cannot nor do we wish to spend out time setting up a complex syste.

bcmink Loc: Monona, WI

My point is that you have a cable, fiber or DSL router which has a built in firewall, in many cases a second WiFi or LAN router which has a firewall; every NAS has a built in firewall sitting behind one or two router firewalls. Those routers blindly port forward at the LAN level to your NAS. All of the Seagate or WD cloud access services are proxies (proxy DNS servers) that anonymize/hide access to your NAS. Just following normal set up for a cloud accessible NAS has redundant levels of security so you don't have to worry about intrusions. Every consumer NAS sold these days is well protected without the average user even having to think about the issue. One would have to go out of one's way to disable layers or built in security in order to be vulnerable.

I'm not trying to pick a fight or talk down on folks. The fears you raise are largely not rational based on the current design of consumer NAS hardware. A decade ago one had to know something about Lan and Wan security in order to provision home NAS arrays. That hasn't been the case for many years.

BobHartung wrote:

Good for you. However, not everyone has the skills to set up a complex firewall as you seem to have. So to suggest this approach for those of us who do not have the skills does limit your advice to a select few.

I'm not dissin' you, just saying that we all cannot nor do we wish to spend out time setting up a complex syste.