If you subscribe to the PCMech newsletter, in last week’s rant I wrote about how I quit cloud storage completely. Yes, I still house my email “in the cloud”, so to speak, but as far as file storage services like Dropbox and SkyDrive, I quit those completely.
Cloud storage invented this need to the effect of, “If you’re not synchronizing your data, you might lose it!” And yes, I bought into this hook, line and sinker. While I didn’t spend any money on the technology, I did buy into the idea of it.
It’s now been a week with no cloud stoage. Am I feeling any anxiety about not having my data cloud-synchronized?
Nope.
This actually surprised me a bit, because I thought I’d feel at least some anxiety over not synchronizing my data, but I don’t. The world didn’t end, I don’t feel any sort of panic over not synchronizing and can get on with my digital life just fine.
If I really feel the need to save something just in case my computer’s drive dies, and my USB stick dies, and my DVD disc backup goes bad and my home gets struck by lightning and burns it to the ground all at once on the same day, I just email the document or whatever-it-is to myself so it’s stored in my webmail.
I know some people think cloud storage is the best thing since cushioned toilet seats, but for me it was more a novelty than anything else. All that cloud stuff is now uninstalled from my computer and I don’t miss it whatsoever.
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Sorry to disagree with you Rich, but I’ll never buy the idea that mailing files to yourself is more efficient and secure than Dropbox or others.
Wanna bet? http://www.emptyage.com/post/28679875595/yes-i-was-hacked-hard
That hack actually began with Gmail… (although it was enabled by courtesy of Apple). So e-mail is certainly no more secure than any other cloud solution.
In Dropbox, if someone gains access to your web account, they wouldn’t be able to automatically wipe out files and folders on your PC outside of your Dropbox folder. It would take effort and expertise to do so, and if you have a firewall in place it wouldn’t be easy.
Then explain this one: http://gizmodo.com/5932161/why-the-cloud-sucks
Both articles concern a mix of Apple and Google technologies. Hmmm…
Here’s an article you will better understand. http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1717
I’ll stick with external HD back up also, easly stored in a small fireproof safe with other important documents. No one else can gain axcess to it, something the cloud deals can’t guarantee.
Rich, all I can say is that in the way you use cloud storage, it probably wasn’t a good fit. For me, it’s an exceptionally good fit. Here are a few examples:
1. Despite your belief that nobody really uses the tools for collaboration, I do. Actively and regularly. I use a Dropbox shared folder for the job, which is great because it also has some built-in “versioning” (maybe not full-on like a proper repository, but I can get an older version if disaster strikes).
2. Speaking of versioning, I use Mercurial along with Bitbucket to store development projects. I can then access these from any machine if I need to, even though I do most of my changes and commits from my desktop machine.
3. I use Dropbox to store a copy of Keepass and my password database. I can access this on my Android phone or using the Web interface. But more importantly, I can use the same password store on both my work and home computers while maintaining just one file.
4. Offsite backup is the only way to fly for backing up valuable files. If you are putting your precious photos onto a hard drive and then keeping it at another location, you’re fine. That’s offsite. You don’t need cloud storage. But if you keep that hard drive at home, you’re Doing It Wrong(tm) because fire could devastate all your existing copies (disclaimer: I suppose you could get a fireproof AND heat-resistant safe; make sure it won’t cook the drive inside even if the safe isn’t physically damaged). So, now you need to periodically retrieve, update, and return your backups. I don’t know anybody who does anything but spiral into laziness with this approach. My photos are so important to me, but I know I’d back up to offsite HDD once a year at best. That’s up to a year of photographs of my family, gone if there’s a disaster. The $4/mo I pay to Backblaze is more than worth it for me to have an ongoing backup of all my photographs that I can set and forget. As a side bonus, I could retrieve these files from anywhere, but I’ve only ever used that function once. $48/yr is worth my time and effort. It might not be worth everybody’s, in which case you’d better be doing HDD backups with a good and solid routine.
All good points you made.
Per the collab features, there are much better ways of going about that. For documents, GDocs is far superior for that task. Yes, it’s required the contributors have Goog accounts to participate, but it’s still a superior solution. For dev projects that have other files involved (binaries and such), then yes the cloud storage w/collab is pretty much mandatory.
I was doing the same thing where I was synchronizing a KeePass db to Dropbox and then later to SkyDrive. However I discovered this to be useless when all that’s required is coming up with a password naming convention that you can remember easily but is very difficult for others to guess. If I lost my KeePass db, yes that would suck, but I would still be able to get into all my accounts.
Flickr Pro ($24.95/year) for photo backup and management is a far superior solution to file-only cloud stoage because you can tag everything (the good way, not the bad social way), geolocate them, have instant camera info via EXIF data and have a whole bunch of other stuff at your disposal. Dumping photos via the file-only cloud method doesn’t even come close to how good Flickr Pro is, and it’s one of the few photo management services I know that’s absolutely worth the annual fee to use it.
Rich,
There’s merit to your approach as well, but I do not find GDocs to be superior for collab. Especially if some of the participants are using Office, which GDocs can sort of read but doesn’t do a great job of. There are better tools than Dropbox also (entire enterprise solutions are built around collaboration!) but GDocs isn’t it for me. We’ve given it an honest try at my workplace and it always just gets hairy.
The Keepass thing… yeah, neither of us has the “better” approach, although I’m not sure why you bothered with Skydrive– that’s a layer of redundancy that doesn’t provide any net benefit. I like your idea of a “password convention”; I have a few approaches I take, but not one central convention that will work always. I am also a bit of an edge case; as a web developer, I have need for other people’s passwords, too. But I know that’s not the norm.
However, I can’t more strongly disagree with Flickr Pro as an ideal photography backup solution. I would use Flickr Pro *along with* my cloud backup, but Flickr Pro does not handle RAW files (or the metadata files that are generated by using Photoshop or Lightroom), and I don’t think it’s at all an efficient way to store 300GB (and growing) of photos. To the best of my knowledge, there is no good way to say “give me all my photos as a download, or mail them to me on a hard drive.” I also do not believe you can do a batch upload without having to then individually modify the information (ie. there’s a non-automated information collection stage). The benefits you describe are sharing and social features, not backup solutions.
The only time I could see Flickr Pro even being “passable” as a backup solution is if you are always storing JPGs, and are in the habit of meticulously culling and curating your own collection. And THAT is an edge case.
There is NO way I would put ANYthing I valued out “in the cloud.” I want my stuff on my OWN storage devices and in my safe. The original of anything that contains any part of identity or financial information is strongly encrypted, so I can backup and not worry about it. I have the original on a main hard drive partition, a duplicate on a second hard drive partition, a third copy on a passport, and a fourth copy on a passport in my safe. No, I don’t update them all every day, but the 2nd hard drive copy is updated every day, the 1st passport once a week, the 2nd passport (in the safe) is swapped out with the first one once a month. Really, REALLY important records are also on DVD and flash drive in the safe. Even banks get hacked; don’t you just know the hackers are working overtime on “cloud” storage sites?? When they finally get there, my stuff won’t be there.