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A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

blog.golivecosmos.com

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Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#141

Post by 9dev »

jbd0 wrote: post #86
9dev wrote: post #34

You know… I deal with complexity, redundancy, unexpected errors, hardware specs, software updates, security issues, automated exploits, and so many other things, all day. I just don’t want that at home. I’m sure it’s nice to feel in control of your stuff, but I’d rather do something with my family, read a good book or go for a walk instead of having more of the same shite I put up with all day at work.

It sounds like you may be burned out. I was in a similar position until I changed fields entirely and took a long break from computer work. Eventually (over a year) my passion for technology slowly returned. It helps that I have more time with my family now and I don't have to learn proprietary cloud APIs or Kubernetes.

I wouldn’t say burned out per se - I started paying more attention to my body and mental health, and that noticeably requires me to take a step back from engulfing myself in technology.

It’s good to hear the passion returns eventually though. All the best to you.

Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#142

Post by katrinarodri »

JeanMarcS wrote: post #25

Ok. So now your house is on fire. How do you retrieve your datas from the melted local NAS ? Or a buglar come and empties it. Don't get me wrong, I'm full "move away from the cloud" in the "proprietary cloud" way. But getting some drive space on a different location is important if you care about your datas. Could be in a relative's or friend's place (so almost no per month cost) or on a cloud drive (I personnaly use…

yes, a backup solution is an important part of the overall setup. Didn't mean to make a case for a permanent move away from all cloud storage, but wanted to understand the shortcomings of cloud-only storage, especially from proprietary cloud companies. Setting up backups, whether they are with other cloud providers or local NAS, is important to safely store your data.

Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#143

Post by katrinarodri »

hexfish wrote: post #65
JeanMarcS wrote: post #25

Ok. So now your house is on fire. How do you retrieve your datas from the melted local NAS ? Or a buglar come and empties it. Don't get me wrong, I'm full "move away from the cloud" in the "proprietary cloud" way. But getting some drive space on a different location is important if you care about your datas. Could be in a relative's or friend's place (so almost no per month cost) or on a cloud drive (I personnaly use…

Well it's an important point, but I don't think the author of OP argues you shouldn't do that. By the way: have a look at restic, it's great (if you don't require a GUI).

yep, agree backups are important and that could've been pointed out in the OP. Any storage plan will also mean including a backup plan so if something goes wrong you can restore.

Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#144

Post by vel0city »

saltcured wrote: post #135
vel0city wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 2.5" HDD isn't the same kind of media as an M-DISC. Magnetic storage will lose its charge over time. I've lost content from bitrot on magnetic media many times as well. Arguing I won't be able to read an M-DISC in 10 years because your magnetic media wore out in 5 years is beyond comparing apples to oranges. > It would take some time to find a miniUSB patch right now, especially a good one. I've got a pile of them…

Hmm, I've seen old HDDs fail to spin up or otherwise have catastrophic malfunction, but never heard of them having real bit rot. I recently booted up some portable PCs from around 1990 to review their HDD content and scrub the disk state before handing them over as e-waste. Easily 25 years on the shelf. I would think you'd have to do something very wrong like storing the HDD near a degausser to lose the magnetic reco…

Did you actually validate every bit was exactly right on the drive? Did you even have the information to validate that data? Not just that they booted up without a noticeable error, but that every bit was exactly as written 25 years ago? How many drives did you test, how many manufacturers?

Most of the bits will probably be fine. Some of them probably won't be. The rate depends on a myriad of factors. Even within a brand different models will be better or worse, and it's not exactly a metric you'll find listed. And then yes the way they're stored is also a factor and even the environment when the data was written.

I've had drives from the 80s still work and still pretty much have all the data. I've had files get corrupted on modern drives with no other explanation than bitrot. Even just cosmic rays can eventually flip some bits.

Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#146

Post by saltcured »

vel0city wrote: post #144
saltcured wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I've seen old HDDs fail to spin up or otherwise have catastrophic malfunction, but never heard of them having real bit rot. I recently booted up some portable PCs from around 1990 to review their HDD content and scrub the disk state before handing them over as e-waste. Easily 25 years on the shelf. I would think you'd have to do something very wrong like storing the HDD near a degausser to lose the magnetic reco…

Did you actually validate every bit was exactly right on the drive? Did you even have the information to validate that data? Not just that they booted up without a noticeable error, but that every bit was exactly as written 25 years ago? How many drives did you test, how many manufacturers? Most of the bits will probably be fine. Some of them probably won't be. The rate depends on a myriad of factors. Even within a b…

Fair enough, I did not have checksums to compare. And I only randomly sampled the contents, not every single file. But yes, it booted and every program I tried executed normally and every data file I inspected seemed valid.

I do have some familiarity with how such old systems would misbehave with corrupt data, such as from bad data cables. I didn't see any of those kinds of symptoms and so do not think there was any significant storage decay from being on the shelf at least 5x longer than the 5 year interval mentioned up thread. I tend to think that such a failing drive must have had some other kind of damage and not just some kind of spontaneous demagnetization

Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#147

Post by vel0city »

saltcured wrote: post #146
vel0city wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you actually validate every bit was exactly right on the drive? Did you even have the information to validate that data? Not just that they booted up without a noticeable error, but that every bit was exactly as written 25 years ago? How many drives did you test, how many manufacturers? Most of the bits will probably be fine. Some of them probably won't be. The rate depends on a myriad of factors. Even within a b…

Fair enough, I did not have checksums to compare. And I only randomly sampled the contents, not every single file. But yes, it booted and every program I tried executed normally and every data file I inspected seemed valid. I do have some familiarity with how such old systems would misbehave with corrupt data, such as from bad data cables. I didn't see any of those kinds of symptoms and so do not think there was any…

Another thing to remember is some of the really older disks will have larger magnetic areas as platter density wasn't nearly as much. As densities increased the amount of total charge per bit decreased as there's just less magnetic material available. Just one of the many factors of how likely you are to experience any issues.

Refreshing every five years for magnetic storage is probably overly cautious to me from my own personal experiences. But FWIW if it's data I really care about it doesn't spend years sitting around on just magnetic media. For my own personal risk tolerance putting important data on say an external hard drive and sticking it on a shelf isn't a great way to archive data. I might do it with data I'm OK with eventually maybe losing, but if it's something I know I'll want in 20+ years it gets a few copies with one being on some highly reliable optical media like M-DISC.

Your hard drive might go a long, long time without losing a bit. And maybe if you do lose some data, it's a couple of typos in some help file. Maybe it's some rare code path in an executable that almost never gets called. Maybe it's some b-frame in a video that you'd never even notice. Maybe it's some important bits of the last photo you had of a loved one. Maybe it's some important field a database. Maybe it was empty space. Who knows.

Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#148

Post by justsomehnguy »

vel0city wrote: post #132
justsomehnguy wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you really think in 10-15 years it will be hard to find a device that still talks USB? It would take some time to find a mini USB patch right now, especially a good one. Sure, now I can find it. In 10 years? N=1 anecdote: two years ago I helped to recover data from a 2.5" USB drive, which was left in a desk for 5 years. I was forced to use R-Studio and still I got only 90% of data in good enough condition.

A 2.5" HDD isn't the same kind of media as an M-DISC. Magnetic storage will lose its charge over time. I've lost content from bitrot on magnetic media many times as well. Arguing I won't be able to read an M-DISC in 10 years because your magnetic media wore out in 5 years is beyond comparing apples to oranges. > It would take some time to find a miniUSB patch right now, especially a good one. I've got a pile of them…

> Arguing

It's more about winning a jackpot in storage lottery. That HDD shouldn't had that data corrupted so bad, yet it did.

> I've got a pile of them already

And I have at least two without actually looking in the 'cables box'. 10-15 years ago I had from five to ten of them at any time, but what about some time later?

> along with the optical drive/enclsure

My desktop DVD drive just quietly died after prolonged period of no usage, just being powered on. You know when I found out? When I needed to read a DVD.

> Microcenter right now and buy one, they have dozens of cables in-stock in-person

Now? Sure. Two years ago I even saw an Apple 30-pin cable in the same type of store (and I checked now, they still sell it, even in two colours). Would there be a 30-pin cables on sale in 10 years? Doubt so, even in 5 is questionable.

And now everyone and their grandmother are moving to Type-C for everything. The same store has no Type-A -> mini-USB cables, except the weird one with additional miniJack on the Type-A side.

> I can't imagine

You can't. Do you still have Nokia thin charger? Moto CE-Bus?

And you missed the point arguing about specifically mini-USB. Sure there are a lot of mini-USB cables out there. But at some point most of them would be in the dumpster pile. Just like Wide SCSI and FireWire cables now.

Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#149

Post by vel0city »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #148
vel0city wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 2.5" HDD isn't the same kind of media as an M-DISC. Magnetic storage will lose its charge over time. I've lost content from bitrot on magnetic media many times as well. Arguing I won't be able to read an M-DISC in 10 years because your magnetic media wore out in 5 years is beyond comparing apples to oranges. > It would take some time to find a miniUSB patch right now, especially a good one. I've got a pile of them…

> Arguing It's more about winning a jackpot in storage lottery. That HDD shouldn't had that data corrupted so bad, yet it did. > I've got a pile of them already And I have at least two without actually looking in the 'cables box' . 10-15 years ago I had from five to ten of them at any time, but what about some time later? > along with the optical drive/enclsure My desktop DVD drive just quietly died after prolonged p…

> That HDD shouldn't had that data corrupted so bad, yet it did.

No, that sounds like just what I'd expect from magnetic storage.

> Now? Sure.

Well yeah, you specifically scoped it to today in your comment with the words "right now". And no, it's not the weird multi-head variety, they have just regular USB-A to mini-USB. And then thanks for showing that even a decade after the dock connector was phased out it's still easily to find the cables in store today. And thanks for pointing out there's multiple varieties of MiniUSB cables sold today, really reinforcing the idea it's still easy to find.

https://www.microcenter.com/product/263914/qvs-cc2215m-06-us...

> Do you still have Nokia thin charger? Moto CE-Bus?

No, but neither of those were even a fraction of market penetration as MiniUSB. My household maybe had one Nokia charger that wasn't just a barrel (of which yes we still have compatible barrel connectors despite being nearly 30 years since). Meanwhile my household has probably received close to 50+ MiniUSB cables over the decades.

Are you seriously arguing Moto CE-Bus was as popular as MiniUSB?

> Just like Wide SCSI and FireWire cables now.

Well if they're like SCSI and Firewire cables today I guess I shouldn't have a problem. There's Firewire in-stock in-person at Microcenter today, right now, as well. eBay and Amazon has tons of listings for SCSI cables, I could get a dozen in just a few days. So it sounds like it should be pretty easy to find MiniUSB if Firewire is the earlier example.

Re: A case for moving away from the cloud and embracing local storage solutions

#150

Post by Encrypt-Keeper »

9dev wrote: post #34

You know… I deal with complexity, redundancy, unexpected errors, hardware specs, software updates, security issues, automated exploits, and so many other things, all day. I just don’t want that at home. I’m sure it’s nice to feel in control of your stuff, but I’d rather do something with my family, read a good book or go for a walk instead of having more of the same shite I put up with all day at work.

It's not as bad as all that. The stuff you control at home doesn't have to support hundreds/thousands/millions of end users, it's just for you, and it doesn't need to be publicly accessible. We're talking quarterly maintenance at most.
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