Rangerland Forum Information

[Ulfie #5]

I have tons of stuff on my home computer that I need to back up, including over 50 gigs of photos and video of my son. If I were to ever lose that my wife would destroy me. So, I've been researching cloud storage services and had narrowed my choices down to Backblaze and Crashplan. Both offer unlimited storage for around $60/year.

Today, a coworker mentioned the alternative of buying a NAS setup. I can get an Iomega 1 TB cloud drive from Newegg for about $165. I know nothing about NAS drives. So, my question is which way should I go? I like the idea of having an offsite backup in case of fire or other disaster. But, I also think the NAS has some advantages, such as being able to access files from anywhere.

Thoughts?

[SorryaboutthatWh...]

I'm not big on the whole cloud thing personally but that's because the files I need to backup are sensitive and I don't trust anyone. I buy TB externals and when I don't need them keep them in fireproof lock box.

[Rick91981]

I've always been a fan of Mozy. I have no experience with either Backblaze or Crashplan.

[Ulfie #5]

Thanks guys....

Rick, so your opinion is to go with a cloud based service over a NAS?

[Beamer]

Thanks guys....

Rick, so your opinion is to go with a cloud based service over a NAS?

Why not both?

Hard drives are dirt cheap these days (well, getting back to being so.) Buy 2. Maybe 3. Put anything valuable on them once a month or so. If you want the cloud storage, go with that. But if these companies ever go under, or have a major hardware failure, etc., know that all that stuff could disappear. If your external HDD goes down (and they do) everything disappears.

If things are really important be as redundant as possible. Hell, if they're truly that important you want to keep an external HDD in a safety deposit box (the fireproof lockbox is great and all, but if it's a true inferno the heat will destroy the HDD, anyway.)

A 1.5TB external HDD runs around $80. Heck, a BluRay writer runs $60 and discs are less than a buck. You could burn your entire collection onto 2 or 3 discs, put them in a safety deposit box, and burn more every month or so.

[Rick91981]

Thanks guys....

Rick, so your opinion is to go with a cloud based service over a NAS?

Yes. A NAS is great for media sharing between machines but not the best solution for a backup. Unless you were to spend a ton of money for a NAS that uses RAID (either 1 or preferably 5), then it is just as susceptible to failure as any other drive. As was mentioned, offsite backup is important as well. But I would not recommend getting several drives and rotating them offsite. Thats a major pain in the ass. Get an online backup, set it up, and never worry about it again unless you need to restore.

[Ulfie #5]

Thanks for the input guys. I'd love to go with Beamer's suggestion and do both onsite and offsite. Unfortunately, budget constraints and my lazy ass would prevent me from that. I think I'll go with a cloud service and maybe in the future grab a NAS.

[Beamer]

Thanks for the input guys. I'd love to go with Beamer's suggestion and do both onsite and offsite. Unfortunately, budget constraints and my lazy ass would prevent me from that. I think I'll go with a cloud service and maybe in the future grab a NAS.

Rick's right, though, an NAS is overkill unless you have several computers connected to it. A cheap external HDD is a better option - just plug it into a USB and leave it go. But leave things on your main HDD because, with HDD, one is bound to die.


It's all about what you're protecting from, though. If it's just from a hardware failure one backup is enough. If it's for things more catastrophic, I personally would buy a bluray burner (probably external, so it's always around), some blank discs, and offsite every so often. I just don't happen to have a single piece of data I consider that important.