Confusion about cloud

Layback Bear said:

...A cloud to me is the most risky because once it's in the cloud you have no control of its security...

Actually, you do have control of your data's security. The most reliable cloud backup services are paid services and those install software on your computer that encrypts your data before it ever leaves your computer and unencrypts it when you retrieve it. The service cannot access your data. If you are really paranoid (not necessarily a bad thing, btw), you can apply your own encryption before the service applies their own encryption.

If you use free cloud storage (which I discourage), you can always use your own encryption software.

whs said:

Right, there was one guy that reported that it took him 4 days flat to get his data back. I don;t remember how many GBs he had. Just try to make a daily image to the cloud and you will quickly find out.

The amount of data I have in the cloud would take weeks, if not months, to retrieve. It's my last layer of defense and I'm highly unlikely to ever need to retrieve all of it. I would have to lose my two local backups and the backup in my safe deposit box at my credit union to have to resort to retrieving my cloud data.

whs said:

I am not a cloud fan either. Although I have to say that in some form I am using a cloud since years.

For my mail I have always used AOL. All my mail is stored at their site and I can retrieve mail from 6 years ago. They never lost one piece of mail (knock on wood). So that speaks for them.

In addition, I have migrated to many different system during the years including Linux systems and an Android tablet. From any of those I can get to my mail and I do not have to worry about migrating my mail files.

I guess that's the idea of the cloud. The open question is how to find a service as reliable as AOL.

In order of reliability and expense: Amazon (the commercial service, not the free ones), Carbonite, Crashplan (again, not the free service).

Keep in mind that any storage media, be it HDDs, the cloud, stone tablets, etc., is subject to failure. The "secret" to avoiding data loss due to media failure is distributed redundancy. Even if you have your data duplicated on multiple HDDs, if those drives are all in the same place, such as your house, they could all be destroyed by fire, flood, etc. or stolen. Having multiple copies in multiple locations reduces the chances all will destroyed or stolen at the same time.

The downside of most offsite backups is they are always out of date. Cloud backups can negate that issue because they can be updated at anytime. The downside is retrieval takes a long time unless you use an expensive business plan. I get around that issue by depending on the HDDs in my safe deposit box for retrieving most of my data and getting the rest from my cloud backup (Carbonite).

I wonder if one could email NSA and retrieve data. I hear tell they have one hell of a cloud that stores data.

Layback Bear said:

I wonder if one could email NSA and retrieve data. I hear tell they have one hell of a cloud that stores data.

That's why there is all that rain and snow. Half of the country is covered by that cloud.

But now a district court judge has ruled that they have to stop. And it may be unconstitutional what they were doing. He has that checked.

Layback Bear said:

I wonder if one could email NSA and retrieve data. I hear tell they have one hell of a cloud that stores data.

Dilbert (in the comic strip) got himself in trouble by hacking into NASA to retrieve his data.

The judge said it might be going against the 4th amendment. I think what he/she is indicating is he/she would like to see someone challenge NSA in the Federal Supreme Court using the 4th amendment.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Our Constitution was wrote by men who spoke what I call High Affluent English but still wrote the Constitution very simplistic and straight forward so most anybody can understand it.
If you ever get a chance read the Federalist Papers
you will understand that they had the ability to wright the Constitution where only some lawyers could understand it but chose not to.
Warning: The Federalist Papers is very dry reading but has a wealth of information leading up to the creation of our Constitution.

http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fed_14.html

There is more to the cloud than storage, programs or even the OS itself could be cloud based. But since the OP asked about storage, what Lady Fitzgerald said regarding "distributed redundancy" is right on. I'd be willing to bet that whatever Cloud Service you use, they have data backed up in case one of their servers crashed so there is a bit of redundancy built-in there.

A combination of local backup in conjunction with cloud backup should be sufficient for most home users. A company with data critical to the business would probably have multiple backups, in multiple forms, in multiple locations so as to ensure that the data will be safe.