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| I don't have a fast connection, so I have been using the free Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive for years, but usually for "small" files less than 300MB, but mostly as a third copy for my most important data, or the one that would be too painful to recover. As of now, I am using 15-20GB out of a total of 25GB for both clouds combined.
I used BackBlaze for a while, and I must say I like a lot their unlimited storage for $5 a month, but eventually I felt I wanted more of a permanent storage solution than a temporary backup solution. Carbonite is also such a backup solution, where files are automatically and permanently deleted after a while if they are removed from your desktop.
Google Drive went much cheaper last week, see thread and article below.
I use an external hard drive for backing up my desktop as a second copy, and the cloud as a third copy for the more important documents I mentioned. A third copy is the only way to ensure near 100% recovery every time for permanently stored documents, but for regularly updated documents a backup with the possibility to retrieve a previous version in time like Backblaze or Apple's Time Machine is really ideal. I can achieve the same with my external drive's incremental backups, so I don't worry too much about duplicating the same feature using a cloud backup service.
There is another transparent way of using cloud services such as OneDrive or Drive, it is to store your text documents and spreadsheet into your local folder for these clouds: Then every time you edit them, the file is automatically synchronized with the most recent version, and you can also edit them from your browser if you are using a laptop on the go while driving and changing the CD in the player and lighting a cigarette. You could even go as far as not even the local folder, just creating and editing these documents directly from the web browser. Both clouds have enough redundant copies of your files spread all over the planet to recover them even after the whole West Coast is ravaged by a huge near extinction level event meteor. | |
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"Cloud" HD backup services?
