Microsoft forecasting clouds - for everyone.

So I assume all of you dissing cloud backups are all managing your own offsite storage then? Otherwise this is basically the equivalent of saying you don't trust cars so you don't leave the house.

andrew129260 said:

msgerbs said:

So I assume all of you dissing cloud backups are all managing your own offsite storage then? Otherwise this is basically the equivalent of saying you don't trust cars so you don't leave the house.

Please tell me you are joking.......that is not even close to the same thing.

"I don't trust cars so I'm not going anywhere outside of my house"

"I don't trust cloud backups so I'm not going to backup my data outside of my house"

Hi there

Cloud Backups for a lot of people are simply NOT feasible. Also please realize the difference between BACKUP (needs to be taken regularly -- may be even DAILY) and ARCHIVE - essentially static data that rarely changes and really only needs to be copied ONCE in its entirety.

Typical cases --

1) Capped Internet Bandwidth -- if you need to backup large music / video libraries then No good -- these can often run to several TB or more.

2) Upload speed -- even with fast broadband most people have UPLOAD speeds sometimes as much as 10X SLOWER than the downloads. Fairly typical in NON cabled areas is around 0.5Mb/s or even slower UPLOAD.
Would just take TOO long for reliable backup.

3) amount of storage space offered - usually far too small to be even remotely useful for serious backup - even a standard Windows OS partition can be around 60 - 70 GB.

4) if you need an OS restore you could be offline so how do you retrieve your data.

5) cost will increase once people get "locked in" to the system.

6) you have NO CONTROL over where this data is stored, what other types of users also have accounts on the same server and even who has access to it -- just look at the recent ebay fiasco. What happens also if somebody uploads pirated torrent content to the same cloud server (not to your account I might add) and then the FBI or MAFAA (MAFIA !!) order the whole site to be taken down maybe forever while a whole slew of court cases take place.

I think except for specific File Sharing - especially when email attachment sizes are limited as in a workplace then it CAN have some use for individuals -- but then I'd use something like DROPBOX - but as a regular backup / archive tool -- forget it.

(Businesses are a different scenario -- they might have their OWN dedicated "cloud servers" from which they can create standardized Virtual Desktop Infrastructures etc - makes maintenance and software installations simpler and possibly cheaper too).

Cheers
jimbo

msgerbs said:

jimbo45 said:

Hi there

Cloud is NOT viable for HOME users as a BACKUP system -- most people I know have Music / Video libraries of SEVERAL TB - now most cloud providers will possibly give a user say 50 GB -- by NO way good enough -- and in a lot of countries you STILL pay for broadbad bandwidth - you need an UNLIMITED usage for decent size backups and you need very fast broadband as well -- most people also forget that even with FAST download - upload can be up to 10X SLOWER !!!

Might not matter in uploading a few files to a file sharing site but uploading several HUNDRED GB will take a while !!!

I think businesses don't have to worry about this as they don't use "ISP's" in the classic sense - the larger companies also have dedicated line / cable systems.

The only time it might make sense as an individual is say you were a journalist and you needed to get pictures and your story out of for example N.Korea etc where normal email etc can't be relied on.

Cheers
jimbo

Where did those TBs of music and videos come from? Surely not original content by them personally. It's most likely either pirated, or purchased off some service like iTunes, Amazon, etc. so why would they need to back that up? Back it up locally if you want, but there's no need to back that up to hosted storage. If your house is destroyed, are you really going to care about your TBs of ripped music? No, you're going to care about your finances, your family photos, etc. The ones that were just destroyed along with your pretty little NAS, if you didn't have offsite backups of some sort or another. Besides, there are multiple reputable backup services that offer unlimited or very high-limit storage, so your point about "50GB limit" is wrong. Sure, downloading it will take ages (Some places ship you disks!) but it's a lot better than it being gone forever, is it not?

Hi there

Ripping CD's to flac -- I have bought in my time around 1000 - 1500 CD's -- if you assume these are around 600 MB average then 0.6 X 1.5 X 10**3 = 9TB just for Audio. When I first started buying music - iPODS and mp3 format hadn't even been THOUGHT of. VINYL was still quite big and for the rest it was all CD's.

(I'm glad I did rip these too -- sometimes unlike VINYL - old CD's can become unplayable !!!).

I also archive DVD's to ISO images -- at an average of around 7 - 8 GB for a standard DVD9 or larger for Blu ray you only need to have around 12 DVD's per TB.

I have TWO copies backed up to external HDD's - I use anyDVD to extract the ISO from commercial DVD's / Blu Ray's and rip the audio CD's to FLAC with the old WINAMP program.

Nothing pirated there.

I HATE compressed mp3 music -- however people downloading tracks from iTunes in highly compressed mp3 format probably can't understand why a music library could be several TB's in size.

My phone can play FLAC and there's a 64 GB micro sdHC card in it so I just copy what I want every so often on to the phone.

I rarely buy CD's / DVD's any more but I still wanted to archive my collection in LOSSLESS formats.

I also store discs offsite too. - However if my house burned down or I was a victim of some other natural (or even man made) disaster I think I wouldn't be too worried about my backups !!! there'd be a lot more to do first. However a much more likely scenario is you could get burgled - so store data also off site -- your DATA in a lot of cases is far more valuable than the actual hardware (computer / laptop etc) itself.

Fortunately where I live this type of petty crime is pretty rare - if I did get an "uninvited guest" I think the dogs would "enjoy their dinner" and the local Police would probably applaud the dogs too!!. All we get is a bit of boisterousness in the evenings in the town centres on Thur-Sun nights as people go out drinking / eating / partying etc etc. Nothing problematic there.

Cheers
jimbo

msgerbs said:

So I assume all of you dissing cloud backups are all managing your own offsite storage then? Otherwise this is basically the equivalent of saying you don't trust cars so you don't leave the house.

andrew129260 said:

msgerbs said:

So I assume all of you dissing cloud backups are all managing your own offsite storage then? Otherwise this is basically the equivalent of saying you don't trust cars so you don't leave the house.

Please tell me you are joking.......that is not even close to the same thing.

i'm andrew129260 "please tell me you are joking. sorry but anyone in their right mind wouldn't trust the cloud. in my case i have 4 internal hdd's not counting c which hold everything i do not want to loose if for some reason c goes down. i also have a large usb 3.0 hdd that holds a synced copy of everything on those 4 drives plus the items on my desktop, so basically i am my own cloud service.