A.R.S.E.

Hey all,

Just wondering what's the best/easiest/fastest online web storage these days? I have read that iDrive is pretty good for about $55 a year (1TB), I'd prefer about 2-3TB, but they don't have anything more unless you pay for 10TB, which is a lot!

I'd like something that can sync a folder, and has a good interface for managing settings etc. Preferably encryption on the user end.

Drive space is cheap, just host your own. Two options are https://pydio.com/ & https://owncloud.org/

I'd rather not host my own, for reasons such as theft of the server, server virus (ransomware), or failure in general. Also figure that the money i'd put into building a server (and space i'd need for it) I could spend less on a cloud solution. I need a safe place to store my photography work, that I can access at home, and also occasionally at work, and on multiple devices.

I found out I have a free Office 365 account from work. Well, I knew that, but I forgot about OneDrive. So i have 1TB cloud storage there. Currently there seems to be a bit of an issue though. Unless you use a web browser to access files, it seems like it's very difficult to not have those files locally on your computer. I mean, it places a folder which you move things to that you want to go to the cloud, but that folder has files that are physically the same size as the original. Basically, as far as I can work out... Folder A - has 10GB of stuff in it. Want that in the cloud. Put Folder A contents in OneDrive folder... still takes up 10GB on your computer.

I looked around the various options but kept getting stuck on the idea of trusting everything to one provider, particularly the pain of having to bring it all down and move it somewhere else if they decide they're pulling the service in a couple of years.

I gave up in the end and set my own up using two Synology NAS drives at two different locations and I'm really happy with it.

It works well. For example, when I take a photo on my phone it's automatically backed up to one NAS when I'm next on wifi, which then backs up to the other each night (alternatively, I could sync them).

There's two HDDs in each box as well, so I have some hardware redundancy too.

I think my main risk is security, but I have strong passwords and two-factor authentication on both systems so it's as robust as I need.

It's an expensive initial outlay but as long as it keeps ticking along for a few years it'll balance out, and this way I have full control.

A couple that might be worth looking at that have end-toe-end encryption.

https://tresorit.com/

https://spideroak.com/solutions/spideroak-one

Tresorit is what I use at work as a back up and for remote access. Spideroak is what I've been planning to use for backup of my home photos and music, I used the trial and seemed to do what I wanted but just haven't gotten around to paying the money and starting the long upload process.

Both have windows clients and can sync/back up specified folder which can also be network folders. I don't like the dropbox method of having a dropbox folder, I want to pick and choose what is synced without having to duplicate it in a single folder.

Actually now that I look at it the max storage either of these seem to have is 1TB so I'm not sure if that is enough for you.

I do all my backup with crashplan.com

I like the service because its not horribly expensive (there are cheaper options), but importantly I have unlimited storage and to use it you just install an agent that runs on your PC (in the background) and it does all the work. Once you have told it what folders to backup it just watches for changes and when you PC goes idle it trickles the changed (added) files out to your backup storage. It also acts as a point of recovery (even for older versions of files) because you can go back a few backup versions of a file and restore an older one.

For $165 per year I get to backup all of my family's computers (up to 10 machines), with unlimited storage, and 100% confidence that the agent is doing all the work (confidence comes from a weekly email report I get from them telling me when machines were or were not last backed up). The service is $69.30 per year for a single machine.

Amazon does unlimited for 60 usd/year https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/home - haven't used myself so cannot comment beyond what's written on that page.

Montey wrote:I do all my backup with crashplan.com

I set up Crashplan at a previous job and it's very good. When I was using it you could backup to a NAS or something alongside the cloud storage too, so recovery needn't be done over your terrible Australian broadband

Biggest issue for Australian's is the piss poor upload speed 99% of us have.

To back up my photos to the cloud would take 33 weeks last time I checked.

Yeah I'm finding that right now. One solution might be taking in my NAS to work, and uploading them to crashplan or similar there.


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Watch out with crashplan. It encypts the backup. So the only thing capable of reading it is itself. Now, this souns ok - until crasplan can't actually read it. Which is exactly what happened to my backup when I wanted to rebuild from it.
The other issue was their speed. It was rather limited.

I can vouch for amazon s3 as a great backup that is unlimited, and fast. Only issue is that it's not exactly cheap. But at least you pay for what you use. One can use glacier which is cheaper but retrieving stuff isn't instant. Something for something.

We also use dropbox (paid) but that is better for collaboration in my opinion. However when 5ppl are subscribing at $100 ea it is suddenly pretty expensive, too.

Eh forgot the part that I've got a local unRaid server where most of my backup goes. Work differential backup every day with Cobian backup (it's an old tool but very configurable) goes to said server, full backup every week. Run out of 6TB space in a year, so I had to buy a couple more drives, 6TB ones this time.

So you see, no online backup could satiate my backup needs fully. There's no way this shitty 40mbps upload can take that load either. I need that gigabit connection, thank you.

The unraid server was the best investment, very easy to expand as long as there's power, drive space, and ports are available in the case. And with the one (or two now!) parity drive option it is reasonably safe against terminal drive failures w/o wasting much drive space.

Crashplan is working okay for me. It took a month or two to upload the stuff during a midnight to 8am window, but thereafter the de-dupe keeps the amount of traffic down. They used to have a scheme where they would send you a drive you could put an initial backup on to send back and seed your online backups to avoid the initial upload. It appears that it wasn't a popular enough option and it is now gone.

I've not had any restoration problems (a file here or there) and I have friends that have done multiple full system restores. I haven't had to use the service to pull me out of the poo though.

Cursed wrote:Crashplan is working okay for me. It took a month or two to upload the stuff during a midnight to 8am window, but thereafter the de-dupe keeps the amount of traffic down. They used to have a scheme where they would send you a drive you could put an initial backup on to send back and seed your online backups to avoid the initial upload. It appears that it wasn't a popular enough option and it is now gone.

I've not had any restoration problems (a file here or there) and I have friends that have done multiple full system restores. I haven't had to use the service to pull me out of the poo though.

For me one or two files were ok, but when the whole sys gone bonkers, and I had to start from scratch - including the reinstall of cobian itself - that's when cobian said 'nope!'.
Best of luck to you, anyway I'm sure it does not happen to everyone everytime, otherwise they'd be out of business. But for me even the chance of it happening again is enough to say no. I don't want anything that keeps my files in some proprietary encrypted format, thanks.