I just read an article on
Forbes' site where the writer correctly argued that despite the cost of
cloud storage being nearly zero (who can compete with "Free!" ?) he likes to use personal networked storage at home for his data.
I agree with the points he makes about why using personal storage is still the better option versus cloud storage. But I disagree on the use of
Network Attached Storage at home. No matter what device I have tried, no NAS at home comes close to the speed of a
Thunderbolt,
Firewire or
USB3 external hard drive when doing regular and incremental backups of my
Macs and
MacBook Pros, as I do.
Coincidentally, one of the biggest problems I have with cloud storage is that despite buying cool utilities like
ExpanDrive. which mount my
Google,
Box,
DropBox OneDrive,
FTP and other cloud storage on my Macs's desktops as local drives, none of them is writable from backup apps like
Carbon Copy Cloner or
Time Machine.
Additionally, the time it would take for my backups to complete even over my 75/75Mbps connections is another huge deterrent.
I personally carry 2 portable drives (one ThunderBolt and one USB3) with my laptops when I travel, while having multiple clones and Time Machine backups at both homes in NY and FL. Each is obviously encrypted with the highest level security, or I would be trading reliable backup with high risk of theft.
No matter what you do and what type of data you have, whether on a phone or a computer, you MUST backup your data, if you value your time, and your data. As
Clint Eastwood would say, A man's gotta know his limits. So does a woman.
Can you afford to lose all the data on your device? Pictures? Messages? Emails? Contacts? How much spare time did God give you that you'd want to take on the burden of re-gathering all the contacts you have? And what about the photos? You do have them backed up somewhere, right?
Don't tell me you are relying on
FaceBook as your personal album storage? What if someone hacks your account and deletes all your albums? Even worse, what if the FB policy
Nazis don't like something you post and delete your account?
By the way, did you know that FaceBook turns your gorgeous 1-15MB photos taken with anything from a cell phone to a fancy camera into pure-crap-minimum-tolerable-quality 72 dpi files of merely 100-200KB? Good luck printing those if you ever want to in the future. Even a USB stick or two are so cheap these days. Not using at least a Thumb Drive is Dumb!
At the very least use something like
Flickr, that stores the images at full size and gives you 1TB free. But check your security settings so none of your private photos become public. (Well, it is OK to give me access to see them. Purely for my giving you security advice of course. LOL).
Finally, remember,
One is never enough, and as I also always say,
Once Every Night isn't enough either. :-) I learned a long time ago that when a laptop drive dies, it will happen on the same day an external backup drive will also die ...and the backup of the backup will be unmountable on that same day. ;-)
So, backup on more than one system (external drive, thumb drive,
CD/
DVD/
Blu Ray,
cloud), with more than one method (data only, full clone, incremental timestamped backups), in more than one place (your home, your parents' home, across the country).
One day (or night) you will thank me for it!
Imran Anwar
Love The Unlimited Cloud, But Within Limits!™
Cloud 9 Global Inc.
IMRAN.TV
