Cloud storage

[Guy Roberts]

Currently I back up my photographs on 2 external hard drives, but I have been thinking that cloud storage would be a good addition.

I was thinking of Amazon Prime.

Any views or recommendations?

TIA

Guy

 

[riveredger]

Jestertheclown, indeed you and others have other procedures on how to keep your valuable personal data safe. If it works for you, GREAT!

Each to their own, I guess although I can't see why you'd be so confused by keeping documents etc. on a second drive. It's certainly not cumbersome or remotely difficult.

You don't explain how you "lost almost everything" but I can't see why, outside of user error, that that would be related to using a second drive for storage.

As for "having different versions floating around," again, that sounds like an problem with your organisation. I certainly don't have that issue.

"It's good to be . . . . . . . . . Me!"

You know, try is not a "this it that" discussion

I think I know what you mean.

Both local backups and cloud-based backups can be used for the same data (photos) which ensures all bases are covered.

I'm fully aware of that.

However, it is, after all, a public forum and I'm simply asking a question.

"It's good to be . . . . . . . . . Me!"

Lol, sorry for my typo ..it should read "this or that"

 

[Chris Noble]

Currently I back up my photographs on 2 external hard drives, but I have been thinking that cloud storage would be a good addition.

I was thinking of Amazon Prime.

Any views or recommendations?

Don't do it. I saw a piece on the news that cloud storage is particularly vulnerable to online attacks and could be the target of Russian Cyber Attacks. Amazon was one that was mentioned.

They have your data on multiple servers so should be fine. However, as long as it is one of several backups you have, there is redundancy for at least one system to fail at any one time.

I don't share your optimism.

In that case, keep your money in gold bars under your mattress. You won't sleep well, but your money will be "safe". Because all your financial asset records are in "The Cloud". Many of the big banks and brokerages use AWS.

And don't fly in airplanes either. Their in-flight engine monitors are Cloud-based.

Maybe you can convince your bank and investment broker to store their data on your home USB drives instead? A lot safer?

 

[LeicaEye]

I can’t understand why when there are no clouds in the sky my internet still connects! Am I missing something! L

 

[In_Cahoots]

I've been using iDrive for about four years. The base plan provides 5TB of disk space and allows up to five devices and attached external hard drives. One of its best features (IMO) is that it allows hybrid backups, that is, a cloud backup and an external hard drive. That external backup is good to have in case of a hard drive failure or Windows becoming irretrievably corrupted (guess how I know that) since you are restoring from a local source. The restore from the external drive is quick and won't hit your ISP's limit on downloads. The interface allows throttling on uploads for the same reason. About $75/year.

 

[Kokopelli_Rocks]

Currently I back up my photographs on 2 external hard drives, but I have been thinking that cloud storage would be a good addition.

I was thinking of Amazon Prime.

Any views or recommendations?

Don't do it. I saw a piece on the news that cloud storage is particularly vulnerable to online attacks and could be the target of Russian Cyber Attacks. Amazon was one that was mentioned.

 

[thinkinginimages]

All the nodes leading to Amazon servers everywhere? That would be interesting. I vaguely remember AWS having a problem now and then, but the sheer scale and redundancy of AWS is impressive. That would be like taking down Google and Microsoft services. They're the very definition of "the web" and redundancies.

That is actually the strength of the internet in general. It's not point to point.

 

[Aberaeron]

I can’t understand why when there are no clouds in the sky my internet still connects! Am I missing something! L

They change the sky in seconds these days using AI. That’s artificial intelligence, I assume, not artificial insemination. However I’m often wrong.

 

[LeicaEye]

I can’t understand why when there are no clouds in the sky my internet still connects! Am I missing something! L

They change the sky in seconds these days using AI. That’s artificial intelligence, I assume, not artificial insemination. However I’m often wrong.

Grasshopper says thank you… L

 

[Lucio Cicuto]

Jestertheclown, indeed you and others have other procedures on how to keep your valuable personal data safe. If it works for you, GREAT!

Each to their own, I guess although I can't see why you'd be so confused by keeping documents etc. on a second drive. It's certainly not cumbersome or remotely difficult.

You don't explain how you "lost almost everything" but I can't see why, outside of user error, that that would be related to using a second drive for storage.

As for "having different versions floating around," again, that sounds like an problem with your organisation. I certainly don't have that issue.

"It's good to be . . . . . . . . . Me!"

This was 15+ years ago...I don't recall exactly why but not keeping documents on the C: drive was not standard for most apps and utilities. Probably my lack of knowledge and understanding of how things worked.

Well, I was backing up files on NAS drives which developed a hardware problem I was not aware of... then I reacted and attempted to recover as a result of getting a virus. That's when "user error" accidentally deleted files. A combination of multiple issues at the same time. Luckily I had a separate external backup drive with 99.8% of my files.

I used to have the multiple versions of files when I was dealing with main and backup folders connected. Yes.. this was definitely my issue...user error. I solved that issue now that I only have 1 copy online at any time and just let TimeMachine, iCloud and FileSync app take care of the backups.

User Error is probably a bigger cause of lost files than virus or hw failures combined.

 

[Jestertheclown]

Jestertheclown, indeed you and others have other procedures on how to keep your valuable personal data safe. If it works for you, GREAT!

Each to their own, I guess although I can't see why you'd be so confused by keeping documents etc. on a second drive. It's certainly not cumbersome or remotely difficult.

You don't explain how you "lost almost everything" but I can't see why, outside of user error, that that would be related to using a second drive for storage.

As for "having different versions floating around," again, that sounds like an problem with your organisation. I certainly don't have that issue.

"It's good to be . . . . . . . . . Me!"

This was 15+ years ago...I don't recall exactly why but not keeping documents on the C: drive was not standard for most apps and utilities. Probably my lack of knowledge and understanding of how things worked.

Well, I was backing up files on NAS drives which developed a hardware problem I was not aware of... then I reacted and attempted to recover as a result of getting a virus. That's when "user error" accidentally deleted files. A combination of multiple issues at the same time. Luckily I had a separate external backup drive with 99.8% of my files.

I used to have the multiple versions of files when I was dealing with main and backup folders connected. Yes.. this was definitely my issue...user error. I solved that issue now that I only have 1 copy online at any time and just let TimeMachine, iCloud and FileSync app take care of the backups.

User Error is probably a bigger cause of lost files than virus or hw failures combined.

 

[Mark B.]

Currently I back up my photographs on 2 external hard drives, but I have been thinking that cloud storage would be a good addition.

I was thinking of Amazon Prime.

Any views or recommendations?

Don't do it. I saw a piece on the news that cloud storage is particularly vulnerable to online attacks and could be the target of Russian Cyber Attacks. Amazon was one that was mentioned.

Ummm...ok. Go ahead and let them waste their time & resources with my photos, lol.

 

[Janer_2]

I've seen links that say cloud services aren't safe posted here, but here's another link that is a bit more nuanced imo: https://www.businessinsider.com/is-google-drive-secure?r=US&IR=T

Sure there are risks, but that's also the case with disks. A disk doesn't even have to be used a lot or take a hit to stop functioning. It could be sitting on your shelf for years and suddenly not work. The point is that there's pros and cons whatever you choose.

I for one think cloud storage is pretty safe and will not be turning back. I have a Google One sub and thus use Google Photos for all my videos and photos. The only thing I find it lacking is the resolution limit (if you stack a lot of exposures to make a high res pano for instance), but that rarely is an issue. Uploading is fast, if not it's bad band width.

Then I've connected it to my Chromecast which displays photos on my TV in standby mode, I always have access to them via mobile phone or a computer. It also opens up a whole world of sharing albums and photos with relatives and friends, which can be really convenient.

I also have a sub with Adobe that gives me a relatively decent amount of online storage, the downside is that it only includes Lightroom CC, but I'm learning to live with that. So all my RAW files are stored there and can always be worked on via PC or mobile if I need it (I rarely do though).

 

[jthomas39]

If you get one of those "ransomware" viruses, it scans through your drives looking for documents and media files to encrypt in place with a secret key. They may or may not send you the key to restore your stuff after you send them some bitcoin ransom.

Will the encrypted files flow right to the backup hard drive and the cloud storage? Or is a least one hard drive kept off line? Can you roll back to older versions of the files from the cloud storage, and how hard is that to do? How soon do you need to notice before it's too late?

Some years ago, at work, the shared files server got ransomware. It was kind of primitive, immediately encrypting everything, so it was obvious within a few minutes--broken spreadsheets, unviewable photos, etc. The virus was removed from the PC that infected the shared files, then good versions of all the files were restored from the offline local backup of the previous night. That took most of the day, and that day's work was lost. Compare to the large public companies that were impacted for months or paid big ransoms. They were too huge to recover reasonably fast.

 

[Bob A L]

Reading through this thread makes even happier that I only shoot jpegs. I don't worry a lot about huge backups for my photos and have several different forms of backups in use and when I'm gone it won't be important anyway. My family has copies of anything important to them and if those are backed up or not it's their problem, not mine.

 

[davidwien]

If you get one of those "ransomware" viruses, it scans through your drives looking for documents and media files to encrypt in place with a secret key. They may or may not send you the key to restore your stuff after you send them some bitcoin ransom.

Will the encrypted files flow right to the backup hard drive and the cloud storage? Or is a least one hard drive kept off line? Can you roll back to older versions of the files from the cloud storage, and how hard is that to do? How soon do you need to notice before it's too late?

These are good points. If I have a connection permanently for continuous backup on a cloud server, would every “up to date” copy get encryped in the case of a ransomware attack — including cloud backups?

 

[Tom_N]

If you get one of those "ransomware" viruses, it scans through your drives looking for documents and media files to encrypt in place with a secret key. They may or may not send you the key to restore your stuff after you send them some bitcoin ransom.

Will the encrypted files flow right to the backup hard drive and the cloud storage? Or is a least one hard drive kept off line? Can you roll back to older versions of the files from the cloud storage, and how hard is that to do? How soon do you need to notice before it's too late?

These are good points. If I have a connection permanently for continuous backup on a cloud server, would every “up to date” copy get encryped in the case of a ransomware attack — including cloud backups?

Yes. Any sort of continuously-attached storage – whether internal, external, NAS (local cloud), or cloud – to which you have write permissions is vulnerable to such attack. It might take a lot longer for the ransomware to go through data in a cloud than it would take it to go through data on local drives, but that might not be a lot of comfort, if the ransomware got enough of your files before you detected the attack and closed down your cloud connection.

Some cloud providers might have multiple snapshots of files – and, if you were lucky enough, might be able to restore pre-attack versions of some files from old backups, on request, This would be like restoring files from an old, off-line hard drive backup, in the hopes that although you would lose recent work, the files that you could restore would be old enough not to be encrypted.

 

[Chris Noble]

If I have a connection permanently for continuous backup on a cloud server, would every “up to date” copy get encryped in the case of a ransomware attack — including cloud backups?

Yes. Any sort of continuously-attached storage – whether internal, external, NAS (local cloud), or cloud – to which you have write permissions is vulnerable to such attack.

My online connection to my Cloud storage (and the Cloud storage itself) is no more or less vulnerable to "attack" than my online connection to my bank and stockbroker. It all depends on the log-in security of the Cloud provider. Don't use a Cloud backup vendor who does not use 2-factor authentication (for example).

Some cloud providers might have multiple snapshots of files

The Cloud storage is just storage. Whether or not you keep time-stamped versions of your backup files depends on what backup software you are using. And you should only use backup software that uses encryption and source/backup verification.

 

[tbcass]

Currently I back up my photographs on 2 external hard drives, but I have been thinking that cloud storage would be a good addition.

I was thinking of Amazon Prime.

Any views or recommendations?

Don't do it. I saw a piece on the news that cloud storage is particularly vulnerable to online attacks and could be the target of Russian Cyber Attacks. Amazon was one that was mentioned.

They have your data on multiple servers so should be fine. However, as long as it is one of several backups you have, there is redundancy for at least one system to fail at any one time.

I don't share your optimism.

In that case, keep your money in gold bars under your mattress. You won't sleep well, but your money will be "safe". Because all your financial asset records are in "The Cloud". Many of the big banks and brokerages use AWS.

And don't fly in airplanes either. Their in-flight engine monitors are Cloud-based.

Maybe you can convince your bank and investment broker to store their data on your home USB drives instead? A lot safer?

I actually use Amazon cloud to back up my photos but I also have everything backed up on 4 hard drives. I would never depend on the cloud as my primary backup.

 

[Tom_N]

There are version control systems, such as the ones software developers use, in which you have to explicitly check in new versions of files to make them 'permanent' parts of the repository.

If you were using a version control system where you had permission to commit new versions of an element, but did NOT have automatic permissions to delete old ones, that could throw a lot of ransomware for a loop. The ransomware could corrupt any uncommitted or checked-out files, and if it was clever enough, maybe even check in new, corrupted versions. But the latest checked-in good versions would still be there, for recovery during a disinfection / cleanup operation.

This approach would require a lot of discipline; disk space, and willingness to put up with delays – which is probably why we don't see a lot of home users running 'cvs' or 'git' to store anything other than software-project-related files.

There are things like Apple's Time Machine and Microsoft's File History which bring some aspects of version control to home users. They're easier to use than version control systems designed for software development – a bit like how cars that have automatic transmissions are easier to learn how to drive. They are probably also designed to protect you against your own accidental saves and deletes rather than against determined, targeted, malicious attack on the version control system itself.

 

[joslocum]

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