quote:

just 50gb.

That makes me feel so old.

Long-term data storage is a non-negligible problem, especially from the point of view of historians and archivists. We can still decipher things left to us by Pharaonic Egypt, or graffiti left at Pompeii; two hundred years from now it'll be unlikely that anyone would be able to retrieve any information from e.g. this forum--and that's assuming the hard drives haven't been wiped!

Hard copy lasts longer, is what I'm saying, and electronic file storage is extremely fragile.

Company I used to work at, the IT guy was touting some sort of offsite data storage as part of disaster recovery/succession planning. Lowly me was literally the only person at the table saying "and what happens when that company goes bankrupt and shuts their doors overnight?"

Cloud services are good in the short term for things like collaboration. Long term, you need to have possession of your storage media. And for really critical/important stuff, you need hardcopy backup.

You're correct, but maybe...storing on more than one provider could be a solution.

I had a nightmare yesterday of an earthquake that decimated my house! That dream was so authentic I woke up all sweaty running around the house. Needed a minute or two to realize that was a actually a dream and not something that actually occurred. That's where this thread originates from.

But since L4C is homosexual, this doesn't really matter.

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cit. "Back then people danced to a dj set. Nowdays they are recording it with their smart phones."

dropbox for current projects and backblaze for full system backup

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www.misterfalconmusic.com

Repeat after me:

There is no substitute for an offsite backup when my house burns down or gets robbed.

Yes, a local backup works until something goes horribly wrong where you keep it.

been a long time dropbox user, but splice is pretty intriguing . i believe it's in beta but has worked seamlessly so far for me - in both collaborative projects and just backing stuff up. also, it automatically saves every version you upload which is pretty sweet. has a cool community section thing too. worth looking into (and i believe it's free/unlimited storage)

http://splice.com

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http://www.monoversemusic.com

quote:

Originally posted by djnitride Repeat after me: There is no substitute for an offsite backup when my house burns down or gets robbed. Yes, a local backup works until something goes horribly wrong where you keep it.

Or until Dropbox gets done by the FBI for harbouring illegal data transfer, or Google decides to kill their cloud storage the way they keep killing off popular apps, or whatever.

Tried and true is still the safest: hard copy in a safety deposit box in an established bank. Even if the bank goes under, you're protected--there are no laws protecting the integrity of your data online.

quote:

Originally posted by deegee Or until Dropbox gets done by the FBI for harbouring illegal data transfer, or Google decides to kill their cloud storage the way they keep killing off popular apps, or whatever. Tried and true is still the safest: hard copy in a safety deposit box in an established bank. Even if the bank goes under, you're protected--there are no laws protecting the integrity of your data online.

Except your stuff is in 2 places instead of one with a cloud backup vs local backup, but I do get your point.

If you really care about never losing data you need offsite cold backups in secure locations.

There's a lot of nonsense in this thread.

I personally use dropbox. They have been around for years (sheeet, I've had my acount for over 6 years now), hardly ever had any problems their support is flawless (I had an issue recently with sharing folders and they got back to me within 12 hours and guided me through the settings), and I get 1tb of storage. The previous version and recovery options are really incredible.

All the other companies are just playing catchup and you have to realize they are not on a platform of the same size or have the tens of millions of dollars invested in to them as dropbox do.

As for dropbox somehow being closed down for illegal file sharing, stop being paranoid. Dropbox's model would easily negate any liability; it's not alike an anonymous torrent site or public download repository like megaupload was. You have to have an account. The liability is on the user, and dropbox does not makes it's base income from advertising, it's from user subscriptions so they're not looking to draw traffic to a site via popular downloads.

USB stick are also a terrible idea. I owned roughly about 50 over the last 10 years that were used regularly and from all differnt brands ranging from cheap chinese crap to premium Lacie and Kingston thumbdrives. Out of those 50, at least 6 or 7 have straight up died, become corrupted or completely unusable and to make matters worse, they are virtually impossible to recover once they die. That's a failure rate of over 10% over 10 years and that's not great odds.

sure, as a secondary or tertiary backup, fine, but not for daily/regular use backups. DVD's and CD degrade over the long term so that's not really a viable solution.

Banks are not a good idea either. Just speak to anyone that had safety deposits at one of the banks that got force mergered at part the financial crisis a couple of years ago. Most people were tied up in paperwork for months trying to access their boxes.

And guess what? If you forget to pay or say you're autopay stops going through, they auction the contents off, so unless you pay for 50 years upfront, you really don't have much security there either. And that's hoping the bank you gave it to is still around in 50 years lol.

If you're really serious, get a tape backup, otherwise, use dropbox, at least one dedicated backup drive that periodically gets cloned to another drive, and then out the really vital stuff on a portable drive and put it in a different location (like in a safe in your parents house).