Your offsite backup solution?

[Mr. McMac]

I use Dropbox, Skydrive, and external HD's stored in remote locations. All my beckups are encrypted with Truecrypt

For music, I use Google Play

 

[Tesselator]

Downright cheap? I don't think so. What are they, like between $100 and $200 a year? A cheap 3TB HDD is like $90 to $120 and how long will an off-line drive last? I say the physical drive will last 20 years or more if only placed on-line once a month. But I guess a typical person goes about it differently:

I would assume that as they upgrade HDDs to newer faster units or replace them due to a policy based on uptime hours (as in my case), the old ones become the offline storage units. You can look at this as a zero cost investment quite easily. And this is also true for a new users setting it up for the first time when he rotates in the backup units as the replacements when the hour limit is hit. Assuming you use at least 3 identical drives in your system (I use 6 identical ones and one system drive) that's three separate external backups on drives you would be throwing away (or selling for $25) anyway.

That makes the $300 too $500 a cloud service wants over those same three years look pretty expensive to me. Anyway, I personally have so many "monthly payments" (bills mostly) the very last thing I need or want is yet another one. UG!

I think something got lost in translation, as I think we are saying the same thing: a stack of local HDDs (particularly if recycled) is cheaper than paying 'forever' for a Cloud service.

For example, a Cloud service that's $100/year means that one can add $100 worth of HDDs every year and be at 'break even'.

I don't think the convenience factor is equal either. Sure if it's only a few gigs... but then you wouldn't be keeping it on HDDs. Just throw-away monthly DVDs will do you. But if it's closer to a terabyte then yeah, no way - well unless your safe deposit box is two states away or something. Figure it's about 10min. to your bank and maybe a 1 hour operation all total to retrieve the offsite unit and hook it up. In that time you could download only about 2GB. And that's with the FASTEST bandwidth there is. I mean really, who has more than 120Mb/s connections and who has an ISP which typically offers and supplies more than about 1 or2 MB/s per connection? Like almost no one... right?

This is also a good illustration that "SneakerNet" still isn't dead While ISP connections are pretty good at moving some stuff, when it comes to big data transfers, FedEx'ing a (tape, or) hard drive is still higher bandwidth.

-hh

Oh right... I see what you're saying. I kinda used your post as an excuse to jump off into my own reasoning. Probably just my link would have been enough ( https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/16879436/ )

 

[Weaselboy]

I think something got lost in translation, as I think we are saying the same thing: a stack of local HDDs (particularly if recycled) is cheaper than paying 'forever' for a Cloud service.

For example, a Cloud service that's $100/year means that one can add $100 worth of HDDs every year and be at 'break even'.

I know you tossed $100 out there just as an example, but online backup is nowhere near that costly. I just pulled up my receipt and see I paid $139.99 for four years of unlimited backups to Crashplan+. So more like $35 a year.

I totally understand if online backup is not a good fit for your usage, but I don't really see the cost as the roadblock given I can get four years of online backup for about the cost of one hard drive.

 

[-hh]

I know you tossed $100 out there just as an example, but online backup is nowhere near that costly. I just pulled up my receipt and see I paid $139.99 for four years of unlimited backups to Crashplan+. So more like $35 a year.

I totally understand if online backup is not a good fit for your usage, but I don't really see the cost as the roadblock given I can get four years of online backup for about the cost of one hard drive.

A fair enough observation, particularly as prices for the service have been moderating. Of course, the counterpoint is that hard drive prices also get better with time too.

For example, an outlay of $139.99 today buys two (2) brand new 1TB HDDs outright ($60/ea), or if one shops around and waits for sales, you might see them again for $49/each.

Overall, it is the process of developing your factors of significance for a value comparison of A vs B (eg, Cloud vs DIY) which is what's important, and this is probably more important than the specifics of the numbers being compared on any particular week.

For example, starting from a "mid-lifecycle" factor mentioned earlier, if we're looking at retiring a couple of HDDs anyway, that stuff is a discount consideration on the DIY side of the question. Similarly, if one decides to upgrade one's ISP connection partly due to the need for greater bandwidth for Cloud backups, that's another factor in the cost comparison.


-hh

 

[Tesselator]

$35 a year for unlimited backups... Yup, that's cheaper than HDDs without a doubt. Now the only problem is speed. And well, trust...