OT: Anyone using Cloud Strorage

[PinkertonD]

Hi All,

I am thinking of storing all of my stuff to Cloud storage as it overcomes concern about burglary, house fire, loss (I am old I forget stuff) or theft of my netbook. I have been doing some research and some Cloud providers offer encryption at the Cloud end, but they also control the encryption key. Others offer encryption before upload and after download but I can't get a straight answer on back-door decryption.

Not that my stuff is so sensitive, but I have 20G of programming source code that I have developed over the past 30+ years and I would not like a Cloud-hacker to get all that hard work for free.

I can write a front-end for TrueCrypt for before and after transfer, but thought I would ask here first in case I am about to reinvent a wheel. SpiderOak is looking good, if they will just respond to my email.

[Kelly_Bramble]

I've been thinking about cloud storage technology and the long view implications. I'm some what of the opinion that it may be a good fit for some organizations, however not me.

Here's why:

Currently the state of technology is that of a shared resource - where you rent storage in a remote location. I don't like re-occurring bills or overhead which is what I envision this "Cloud Storage" thing is currently about. I ultimately want to control my digital assets at a fixed and known price.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_storage

For backups this is what I do…

The Engineers Edge has a working copy at all times – this what you see here.

Daily – late at night, my server does an automatic backup update where any file that has changed is copied to the backup drive location.

Weekly and monthly the backup is archived to a dated backup and a new working backup is started.

Several times a month I download all digital files to my local BIG computers hard drive. On this computer I have a second hard drive where I then copy all of the files to.

Additionally, I have a large storage backup drive that performs a computer backup every other day or so. This is one of the Seagate backup drives you can buy almost anywhere. It is fully automatic and cost effective.

Last but not least I try to burn the most current web digital data to a DVD which I store in a small fire proof safe.

So, let’s count –I have six working copies of the Engineers Edge and related files at any given moment plus a bunch of archives.

Here’s an interesting business perspective on Hard Drive technology, which I mostly agree with:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/5512...mer-hard-drive

[PinkertonD]

Kelly, I don't mind the concept of monthly bills. Everything associated with the computer has monthly bills and when I am away from home and able to still access everything via free wifi, that is a big plus.

However, I am not happy with the idea of my stuff being "in the clear" and under the access of anyone smart enough to hack through the Cloud security. As we have seen too many times, that is not a hard thing to do if the Dept of Defense, Global Card merchants, Sony et al can be easily breached, then cloud storage is ripe for the pickings.

Not that I have any stuff I am worried about the Government seeing with legitimate cause, I don't like the idea of just anybody getting in a looking or playing.

I set up SkyDrive for testing as it seems less intrusive than GDrive's Terms Of Use. I wrote a front-end that encrypts stuff and then places it in the SkyDrive which looks to everything on the PC as just another Folder. In fact the SkyDrive folder backs-up to remote hardware as well.

Now, to those six levels of backup of yours. Unless you are backing up to an external device that can be stored distant to the live data, it is not a backup, it is just another copy. What happens if the server catches fire, or floods or, or, or?

For now, though, I think I will play with SkyDrive, but generally, I am staying with the three rotating external backups I have stored in one of these kinda things. I will keep all my live data on the netbook as I always take that with me.
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Honeywell-...tector/5127160

[administrator]

Here's what I'm using on my tower...

http://www.seagate.com/external-hard...s/goflex-home/

And I use this on my laptop

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=440

The Seagate portables do not seem to last.

[PinkertonD]

I have a couple of Toshiba USB drives that have proven very reliable. Currently also have a Samsung and so far (about 12 months) so good.

I just installed an Intel 330 SSD in my netbook. Awesome improvement in speed. Reliability is yet to be determined. Again though, so far so good.