Pay for a problem that doesnt exist ? Again my hard drive failed on my computer, cost me a lot to recover the data. I had an external drive, that failed after a few years. If i'm away with work or somewhere else and i want to access my files its a bit of a pain to try and get them off my home PC, with cloud services i can access those files wherever i am easily. But best of all its just good to back up your data, if i lose my photos of my daughter i'll be devastated. Terrible solution ? I think you're in the minority big time as theres lots of cloud services out there and lots of people are using them. Too many people seem to store everything on their phone and then cry when they lose their phone ! At least my photos on my phone are being backed up, plus i have a data plan anyway to give me infinite data so it doent matter if i back up 3 photos or 300. But again you're also thinking solely of iOS devices, i think cloud services are great just to back up files from your PC. Didnt see what the fuss was about Dropbox ? I hope it doesnt happen to you but if you lose your phone or your PC crashes one die and has a hard drive error i think you'll find that cloud solutions are quite useful !
Ok you find it useful but if I was going to pay money I wouldn't spend it on a cloud service I'd simply buy something like this. http://www.synology.com/en-us/products/overview/DS413j Much faster most of the time as it's on your own home network it's pretty similar to what I have already and means I can watch videos, share files, etc, on practically every device I own, really any NAS can do everything a cloud service can do but faster and without giving up privacy. I'd really just rather have my data in my own hands than trusting a company who will always be looking for ways to profit more or who could be bought by someone else anytime.
Last week my colleague's hard-drive failed and he lost the photos of his kids. Now, he would pay a large amount to get those photos back, as they are irreplaceable. He didn't realise his backups had failed. I have a Mac, which backs up to a time capsule, but both are in the same house. If we get burgled or the house burns down, we could lose both, so I want cloud backups as an off-site backup option. Sure, I could buy a portable drive and store it with friends or family, that's a valid option. But it's more convenient to use a cloud solution. And the costs are actually pretty reasonable.
I back up my data with multiple cloud storage providers. About 3 in total, I have piece of mind knowing my data will always be around longer than yours.
I dont really care about privacy, i've nothing to hide and i doubt the FBI will go after me because i have 20 Gameboy files stored. Those machines look great, but as others have pointed out they can go wrong. I had a good external drive, not a cheap one and that failed after 18 months and i lost everything, had to pay a forensics recovery place a lot of money to recover it. So perhaps i should be paranoid (PC hard drive failed, external hard drive failed) so thats why i back up things to the cloud. That Synology product you cant seem to buy in the UK, you would have to buy on amazon.com and no doubt pay a lot of shipping charges and customs. $379 at Amazon, just seems a lot of money for what it is. So yeah buy that device, back a lot of stuff up there but for peace of mind its also worth getting one of the free cloud services and backing it up there as well. I dont see the issue here at all, its easy to say '...could be bought by someone else at anytime....' and so could Synology who build those systems, they could also be bought at anytime and might suddenly say 'we're not supporting these anymore when they break down so dont come crying to us'. And as Red1 said if you get burgled (does happen) or even your house burns down you've lost it all. So its common sense to back it up to a cloud system but i have a feeling whatever i say wont matter. Again you've got people here who have lost data due to physical failures, you can also access your data anywhere you want in the world which is 'quite useful' to say the least. No one has been saying 'i've lost tons of data due to backing it up in the cloud, its useless....' or 'i've been arrested as i had a few copyrighted files in the cloud...' etc. Its the year 2014, cloud backups are very very popular and i've never read all this anti stuff before about it. Just bizarre
Just don't think it's worth the trade off in battery and data lets be honest watching a good quality movie will means downloading a few gb's at least, on a phone with a small battery it's just not a good tradeoff and you have to go through the hassle of uploading it in the first place and for a decent amount of storage paying for the privilege. The Synology thing was only an example device there are hundreds of different NAS (Network added storage) devices from companies like netgear, western digital, Belkin, Buffalo, Seagate, etc. Also Raid arrays solve the hard drive issues and have done for a long time so one broken drive isn't going to mean data loss it's essentially exactly the same thing these cloud companies are doing except you have control over it.
After the recent scandals in the US with the NSA, a lot of people here are hypersensitive about online privacy/security and trust levels for the Feds are at an all time low I beleive. That's also sent shock waves out internationally with scandals involving the wiretapping of top German officials as people begin to realize just how extensive the whole surveillance state is. It's not a conspiracy theory; people have had visits from Homeland Security and been investigated for simple google searches. I could go on but I think you get the idea. Some people just aren't comfortable uploading their data to someone else's server.
Well back to storage. I tried that Chinese one where you got 1 TB, sounded good but boy oh boy was it slow uploading files and downloading. I've given up on that one now as it would take forever to upload. I've got the free 50 gig with Box (very quick., works well), I can download cbr files which then I can open directly in a cbr viewer. Plus the free 50 gig with mega. I may keep paying for Dropbox as it does seem very quick
I can add to that myself I've had a problem with the police before and they wanted access to my facebook even though the allegation against me had nothing to do with the internet whatsoever, trouble for me is I don't have one never have and they just don't believe that from people anymore. Can't really go into what the accusation was but it was really crazy one from a guy with a grudge I worked with (it was likely sectarian in nature) that never should have even been taken seriously and led to some of the most crazy days of my life. Anything you put online will be used against you if you get into an unlucky situation, the worlds a crazy place
Sorry to hear that, hope it all got sorted. I know the 'paper trail' you have on the internet is a bit mad at times, some people are so stupid having open Facebook accounts or adding their bosses as a 'friend' then have a day off ill and tell the world they're going shopping ! Twitter trolls are the worst, i mean they can easily be traced, its just stupid. But as for cloud storage i love having peace of mind of storing all my photos so i know i wont lose those. Also i backup all my iOS apps, they were stored on my PC but its about 10 gig now and taking up a bit of room ! So i save them all on the cloud now, very useful if an app gets taken down so i've still got it and can install it whenever i want. I know its geeky but i love it when i'm away with work (or at my parents) i can just download any type of file i want. Very cool !
Yeah it's sorted it's in the past although it was a costly (financial) learning experience for me as I lawyer-ed up immediately and the whole thing was kind of insane it's probably something I'll always be bitter about but such is life.
i like dropbox because many apps connect to it and because it has simple, efficient and solid clients for all my devices (mobile and desktop).
I also like Dropbox the most because of its great app integration. Lately other services such as box and google drive have been offering much more space in their free offering, so I've been using these on the site for less frequently needed files such as old photos and backups of older docs.
Well the company i finally went with was Pogoplug Sounds a crazy name ! But its super cheap and i can pay via itunes so i've used my giftcard to pay for this months. https://pogoplug.com Dropbox is great BUT its quite dear if you want more than 100 gig. Pogoplug (i'm sounding like an advert !) offers you unlimited storage space which was the dealbreaker for me. Plus .cbr files work directly with Comic Zeal (like Dropbox) so i'm happy. $4.95 a month or $49.95 a year (unlimited !). Cant complain at that I'm sure it does exist but i havent got anything to hide. Again if the police want to arrest me as i have some 30 year old Speccy games in my storage space or a couple of scanned comics then fair enough. I dont mind who looks at my data at all. I've got nothing to hide from any google searches either as i dont search for anything strange/bad/sick. I'm sure the Royal Mail over the years have done 'illegal' searches on post yet theres no huge great conspiracy theories about that etc. Its like everyone thinks they're the next Edward Snowden or something !
I uploaded all my iOS DLC content to the cloud, I don't know how legal that is... but i hope its all good. I uploaded all my pinball tables season 1~3.. I know i can restore purchases officially.. but I just want extra backup in my own personal space.
Can't see that being illegal. My apps are backed up on my external drive as I don't have enough room on my pc!
Yeah it'll be Dropbox, when i had a Samsung phone recently (for 5 days !) you were given 50 gig free by Dropbox. Worth using just to back stuff up. Again i preach about backups because i've had my hard drive (computer) crash and an external drive crash, both cost quite a lot to recover the data on ! Backups backups backups now for me !
