traderjohn Loc: New York City

I guess the "cloud" is falling is not so much of a big deal after all

GMCJim Loc: York Haven Pa

I am another that has no trust in online storage and off topic but related will not be forced to rent software like lightroom. This goes back a couple years my daughter got a nook from Barnes and Noble for Christmas. Over time she accumulated a couple hundred dollars worth of books downloaded and saved to the Nook. When Barnes folded ALL books dpownloaded from Barnes disapeared even the free ones. The ones downloaded from Amaxon still work. The obvious answer is that the books were not downloaded but thats still theft in my book. Because that is NOT how it was advertised. Now it is becoming difficult to buy a physical copy of games for pc and other software is following.

OK most of you will see this as a conspiracy theory and label me a nut. I can live with that. But its not likely to change my mind.

Fotomacher Loc: Toronto

I have about 40,000 images so paying for a backup solution does not concern me. I am using 2 3TB HDDs connected to my iMac, one primary and one redundant backup and the entire contents are backed up using BackBlaze in the cloud. Google is an example of getting what’s paid for. Just sayin’

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Those are telecom companies, NOT cloud providers. Google “cloud providers that went out of business”, and then you’ll be appropriately informed. The relatively small company was Nirvanix. I worked for a company that built global file systems for data sharing at the time (who is still in business), and I know the story intimately as we assisted customers (who had over a month of notice) in migrating their data to other providers such as IBM. Two more points that I have made at least a dozen times during these discussions: 1) the cloud should be your DR or archive copy - you should have multiple copies of your data (active and backup) locally. (2) if you house your data in anything other than major providers such as Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, then you’ve been warned - small computer companies go belly up all the time, but if IBM or Microsoft goes belly up without notice, then you’ll have much bigger things to worry about since your banking, insurance, credit info, credit cards, medical records and social security is already in the cloud. In fact, there is a secure cloud service that the major intel agencies use.

Now, you and I have had this discussion before (ad nauseam), and I don’t intend to do it again. Either take the information I’ve provided as well-informed fact (since I’ve spent about 3 decades in the data storage industry with the largest storage companies in the world) or don’t - I have no investment in an extended argument, so I won’t be responding further if you care to start one of those endless dialogues.

Country Boy Loc: Beckley, WV

I don't like the idea of putting your "only" copy of anything on line but think using on line for back up security is great. My school alumni paid a company to host a website on which we had thousands of photos and articles. They were great for about 4 years and one day we could not log in to the site. We found the owner died, the wife could not run the site and the employees were gone and we had no access to the on line data. The wife felt really bad but could not provide access. You just need to remember you are putting your data on someones server and the security of your data depends on that person or company. Some good, some not so!

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

So what did the local Bedouin do before the well was put in???

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

lilac

Good morning!
I think you had just hit the nail on the head. That being said this is not the way they advertised it. When you signed up for it people stood by their words that does not happen quite so much anymore.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

I have our high school class website as a subdomain on my site server. Yup, I croak, it is stuck until my wife stops paying the hosting fee, then POUF!

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I view cloud backup as a fourth level system.

My primary backup is a hard drive connected to my computer.

My secondary backup is a hard drive stored in the house, but as far away from the computer as I can reasonably put it.

My tertiary backup is a hard drive stored somewhere else in town (I had a barn about a mile away).

My quaternary backup is on the cloud.

The primary, secondary, and tertiary backups are occasionally synchronized and rotated.

If my primary backup fails or my computer catches on fire I have my secondary backup. If the secondary backup also fails or if the computer (or something else) burns down the whole house I have my tertiary backup. If I had lived in Paradise, CA last year, my tertiary backup would also have been destroyed by fire.

Hard drives fail. I try to avoid that by (1) redundancy -- having 3 hard drives for backup and (2) a cloud system. To keep my backups viable takes maintenance. I have to keep the drives running occasionaly to exercise them so the bearings don't lock up. I have to occasionally verify the data so it doesn't get corrupted without my noticing. I have to replace the drives occasionally to avoid age related failures.

The advantage of the cloud storage is that someone else takes care of the maintenance. They hire people who are skilled at it and use components that are reliable, redundant, and distributed. I view cloud storage as being much more reliable than local storage.

Having said that, I should point out that I view local storage as MUCH more convenient than cloud storage. If I have a problem and have to restore a large block of data, I can do it from local sources in a few minutes or hours. Restoring a few Terabytes of data from the cloud will take me a few days or weeks.

The question is then, is the convenience or the reliability more important to you?

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Same here.
I'm planning to maintain it until most of our class is dead. We're probably down to about 50% at this point. By the time 70-80% of the class is dead the remainder will be uninterested in the website. We don't even have reunions any more.

jccash Loc: Longwood, Florida

jccash Loc: Longwood, Florida

LenCreate

Google+ was created to compete with Facebook. Few people used it, so Google is shutting it down. Google has provided users with plenty of advance notice about the day that the free service will end.

olemikey Loc: 6 mile creek, Spacecoast Florida

Hey, hey, you, you, get off of my cloud .. . . . ……...