Cloud Storage Basics: Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and More Compared

[lazer]

What about MEGA? You get 20GB with a free account and it has end-to-end encryption.

https://mega.nz

sounds good

 

[waclark]

Ha man that's just the original data from photography there is 30 more TB of blu ray rips and backup of my games from GOG. Call me paranoid but we are all one hack or one closed business for losing all our data in the cloud.
So average download speeds never equal average upload speeds no one in the US has an average upload speed of 200mbps that article you linked too says an average of 70 for upload. In my experience having lived all over comcast tends to cap upload speeds to about 40 unless you want to pay more even if your paying for faster downs they are still capped. I am paying extra for gigabyte and my speed test just now puts me at 950 down and 41up but that's all semantics anyways...
Cloud storage works good for some people and doesn't for others and works good for some usages and not good for others is all I am getting at. I am running a NAS at home which most people don't do just a regular hard drive for 2tb is going to be way cheaper for backups than a nas or the cloud on average if you are storing more than what the free cloud offers. as a 2tb good drive might cost you 50bucks these days. Even I use google drive for small frequently used documents and the like not because I like google in particular but because it works well with gmail.

I think that kind of makes my point. Most people, out side of their personal business, don't have anywhere near the data you have.

As for speeds, yes it does depend. I have 1G in and 35M out because I am not in an area that Cox has fiber which is needed to get symmetric 1G. In my other home I have Comcast and in some areas Comcast has 3G upload speeds, but yeah, connection speed matters. However, as in my case, I'm not uploading 30TB all at once. I'm uploading files throughout the day and night.

The point being that Cloud is not just for people with a tiny amount of data.

 

[waclark]

You also learn nothing if you just stuff it all on the cloud. Learning how to navigate raids and nas. you learn how to manage things on your own. you navigate how to problem solve on one's own. First reason I got a NAS was more about learning the ins and outs of networking software and protocols not necessarily the need to have one. It was about the joy of learning something new. Lastly people think they have access to their files 24/7 lol only if you paid your internet connection bill your power bill your rent your bill to the cloud storage. I can take my Nas cross country on the road and easily have access to a massive amount of data without paying a single internet bill.

Why do I need to learn about NAS and storage just because I want to store my files? It's like saying, you need to build your own house so you can learn about plumbing and electrical wiring. Nah, there are smart people who know all about that stuff (I know about NAS and storage). I just want to have a place where I can access my files.

Your comment about 7x24 is a little humorous, don't you think? If you don't pay your power bill, you NAS isn't going to work very well is it? And, without an Internet connection it wouldn't matter that my data is stored locally, I need access to other things in order to do my job. PS - you can't take your NAS cross country if you don't make your car payments, so really, you do have access 7x24. If you're not paying your bills you have other problems than accessing cloud storage.

 

[zulu53]

While local storage have some advantages (and I use it as well), there are some issues:
- it is not free lifetime: it eats electricity, and hard drives breaks regularly (every few years).
- Space is limited, and to extend it you either have to swap hard drives to new ones (which can take 3 days per drive in Synology), fill empty slots if you still have them, or buy extender or larger NAS. This cost solid money. (contradict the previous point)
- Secutiry is a concern given how many issues we've seen recently. To the point that QNAP said people to not connect their NAS to Internet ( https://threatpost.com/qnap-nas-devices-ransomware-attacks/177452/ ). or ransomware on Synology devices: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...alware-infecting-nas-devices-with-ransomware/
If this is safety you're looking for then connecting NAS to internet will always be a bad idea. Often clouds are protected better.
- Noise is just mad. If you live in a flat, you have to be very picky abouyt hard drives. If you have a house, you'd probably throw those into a garrage.
- 'Easy of use' is as well not-so-given. Synology is nice but expensive, other option often are good if you well into unix command line...

Local NAS is much more expensive as well, if you're really looking for protecting your data. Initial cost of 4 drives NAS with 4TB worth of storage (so lets say 4x2TB hard drives) cost anywhere from $600 to $1200 depends on company and quality of hard drives.
And - you need to buy it twice, and store 2nd NAS in some other location. NAS dies as well and sometimes dies in a way all your data is destroyed, so - better be protected.
And - you still should be doing regular physical copies to a BD or tapes.
Which is 10 years of cloud storage. Get 2 cloud storage options for security and reduce that to 5 years... but I assure you, after 5 years you will spend $200-$400 for maintenance of each of your NAS stations.

And no, 2 drives NAS for 'cheap' is asking for a trouble. I would'nt recomend to anyone getting 2 drives for anything of value, and that still would cost a lot of money.

NAS wins. Electrical use is minuscule. SecurityPrivacy better than any service unless you are completely comfortable with being a product. Access from anywhere with wifi service at speeds (depending on your NAS internet connection) that are better than ANY cloud service - and iv'e tested them all over the years. NAS setups last longer than any cloud service who per the article completely change their terms and costs of service every few years. NAS vendors update software continuously to keep ahead of the technology curve: and ease of use is their focus.

 

[zulu53]

Why do I need to learn about NAS and storage just because I want to store my files? It's like saying, you need to build your own house so you can learn about plumbing and electrical wiring. Nah, there are smart people who know all about that stuff (I know about NAS and storage). I just want to have a place where I can access my files.

Your comment about 7x24 is a little humorous, don't you think? If you don't pay your power bill, you NAS isn't going to work very well is it? And, without an Internet connection it wouldn't matter that my data is stored locally, I need access to other things in order to do my job. PS - you can't take your NAS cross country if you don't make your car payments, so really, you do have access 7x24. If you're not paying your bills you have other problems than accessing cloud storage.

It is more about the longer term solution. The way that these services have changed their terms and conditions of the years does not give one any cost of availability security. Rather depend on yourself for long term availability security than any of these vendors. Learn NAS (really not that difficult for anyone with a high school diploma) and you are guaranteed price and availability security for 10's of years. Since their inception I have only found these cloud services useful for short term storage. Long term - no way.

 

[zulu53]

Unless they offer EEE these services are not worth it for storage of personal information. Your information can and likely will be mined by the vendor or whomever they sell it to. Since a number of services offer EEE (and it is clearly easy to implement) do you not wonder why the others don't? You are the product that they are selling. My comment to Techspot; Why bother with evaluation of any of the services that don't offer EEE. You have only listed 2 but (as can be seen in others comments) there are many more.
NAS is the way to go if one is serious. Having tried all of these services (I just encrypted all my files before using the non-EEE vendors) and one of the items they all shade the truth about if SPEED; particularly upload. iDrive, while good in many respects. was painfully slow, to the point of being unusable. Even Google and Microsoft with their server farms were slower than my NAS coupled with its gigabit fiber connection). Its not as easy as some commenters make out to run a high availability/high bandwidth/low latency cloud service. Probably the only true compedition to a fiber connected personal NAS is a cloud service running on AWS. Techspot should review which vendors use AWS.

 

[zulu53]

OneDrive w/ Office is a nobrainer. Has always been. Just get a nice discount from a retailer and it's even better.

Sure: if you don't mind your data being mined. Look - its your IP (intellectual property) so if you decide to share it wiht Microsoft its your decision. But as far as a recommendation for others...........only if they share your sharing philosophy.

 

[zulu53]

What about MEGA? You get 20GB with a free account and it has end-to-end encryption.

https://mega.nz

Yes but............they do account takedowns based on their interpretation of their law and I quote "However, Mega has zero tolerance for illegal activity. While fiercely guarding the privacy of legitimate users, Mega will not be a haven for illegal activity". So God (in the person of Mega) determines what is illegal, since we don't have a worldwide accepted definition of what it legal and what is not legal - what legal in US may or may not be legal in China; for example. Your data (in the sense of security) is in the hands of people who can suspend you access on a whim - better hope you kept your data on a NAS. And how do they know the content is "illegal" if it is all EEE and they are "The Privacy Company"?

 

[rmcrys]

Yes but............they do account takedowns based on their interpretation of their

They have to put it like that officially.

About the subject:
- cloud is more versatile and "everywhere" at any time with no delay

- NAS is safer on all aspects, energy consuption is minimal (if you set to turn off the hdds in inactivity AND your
NAS is based on an ARM chip) and internet access is needed for both cloud and NAS. At least in Europe "everyone" has an internet account BUT if you backup your stuff to a NAS you are using your intranet (only depends on you device's speed, both of PC and NAS hdds). If you backup to a cloud, upload speed is what sets you back and usually the weakest link on such setups.