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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

#51

Post by HelloNurse »

motles wrote: post #5

> a one-time payment for an external hard drive may be a more economical alternative over time. If you care about your data, you are playing with fire. Drives do not store data forever. Data must be read and rewritten occasionally to maintain it, from old media past its lifespan to new media. Good storage software, with the ability to write your data with either mirroring or striping of some sort is able to routinely…

I don't have the impression that anybody here is discussing a single external hard drive.

Also, there's nothing particularly "enterprise" or technically exceptional in backup software that can read old versions of files (for testing) while writing new ones (for current backups) and can copy old backups to new storage locations.

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

#52

Post by tambre »

stef25 wrote: post #45
pmlnr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. So your credit card expired, and the provider cleared your cloud data. How do you retrieve it? See, each has issues.

Or you don't read the small print and Backblaze deleted the backup of your external disk if you don't connect your computer for X days. Happened to me, very fucking pissed. Even when you're an "IT guy" think you've got it all covered it can still blow up.

Do you have any pointers to such fineprint? I can't find it nor did I notice it when I just very recently began using Backblaze.

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

#53

Post by southernplaces7 »

dun44 wrote: post #28
roca wrote: post #6

Security: with local storage it's on you to make sure that your NAS or whatever is constantly up-to-date with security patches. And that's assuming your NAS provider keeps providing patches. It's on you to do all necessary monitoring for intrusion detection etc. Reliability: with local storage it's on you to keep backups, make sure those backups work, replace failing drives, don't accidentally wipe the drive, and mak…

Security: with cloud nobody cares, things leak all the time w/o much consequences Reliability: unless you’re multi-bilion customer nobody cares, Google can simply ban your account and they won’t assign a human intern to perhaps reconsider dropping all your data because the effort would never pay With local storage there is at least one person who cares about those problems. With cloud there is none.

>Reliability: unless you’re multi-bilion customer nobody cares, Google can simply ban your account and they won’t assign a human intern to perhaps reconsider dropping all your data because the effort would never pay

Because of course it just has to be Google that you use for your cloud storage? We can't consider any of the dozens and dozens of cloud alternatives also available with much better customer service involving real humans?

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

#54

Post by southernplaces7 »

justinclift wrote: post #19
solatic wrote: post #4

I don't disagree with the premise, but the author's case is deeply flawed. > Instead of paying a monthly subscription to store and access your files, a one-time payment for an external hard drive may be a more economical alternative over time. Cloud storage has much, much more redundancy than a single external hard drive, and the author discounts the value of that redundancy. > Reliable access Have fun getting grandm…

Unfortunately, cloud storage really does have reliability issues. A recent case in point, though there are many more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2023/11/29/google-i...

So in other words, Google in particular has a reliability issue (big news flash there). Unless you're nitpicking for its own sake, you presumably know there are many other cloud options out there for which you can even use your own encryption system (think boxxryptor, cryptomator, reclone, etc) for maximum privacy. It's neither expensive or hard to run simultaneous, fairly simple multiple cloud backups of one's device data with different providers that each have better customer service reputations than google.

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

#55

Post by stef25 »

tambre wrote: post #52
stef25 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you don't read the small print and Backblaze deleted the backup of your external disk if you don't connect your computer for X days. Happened to me, very fucking pissed. Even when you're an "IT guy" think you've got it all covered it can still blow up.

Do you have any pointers to such fineprint? I can't find it nor did I notice it when I just very recently began using Backblaze.

yeah here https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217665398-Backi...

> Backblaze will backup external USB and Firewire hard drives that are detached and re-attached as long as you remember to re-attach the hard drive at least once every 30 days. If the drive is detached for more than 30 days, Backblaze interprets this as data that has been permanently deleted and securely deletes the copy from the Backblaze datacenter

It's a real fucker like if you have your stuff in storage for a while and then reformat the drive and then try to download everything from Backblaze (what I do every time I get a new computer), only to discover it's not there. Left a REAL bad taste.

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

#56

Post by ryanjshaw »

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.

That's what I used to think. Then you read horror stories of people being lifetime banned by a Cloud provider with robot-only support.

Also, do you really want all your personal documents and stuff accessible on your phone to anybody who grabs it while you walk around with it unlocked on a call? Yes you might be using some security locks on folders but are you 100% sure you didn't miss any path to anything interesting?

I'm slowly working towards local storage first, partial one way syncing from phone, deliberate cloud sharing of limited stuff etc. and I'm having no regrets.

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

#57

Post by sokoloff »

Helmut10001 wrote: post #39
reedf1 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by off-site and offline mirror? How do you go about maintaining that?

Good question. This is a bit tricky and you may argue about the term "offline". My offsite ZFS array sits at a remote location (my parents house, 100km distance - just enough for a nuclear strike). It is automatically turned on using a Shelly PlugS on a timer, once per week. It then connects via VPN automatically to my main site, runs some checks for ransomware (like changed file-count), pulls ZFS updates and then sh…

If you’re sending zfs snapshots (and not deleting them), doesn’t that give you protection against ransomware? If so, a high number of files changed might be exactly when you want to snapshot and replicate, to minimize the worst case outcome (that the ransomware gets root and zfs destroys your local copy).

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

#58

Post by freetanga »

buro9 wrote: post #17

Syncthing is a dream. Photos sync'd from phone to laptop making pics taken instantly available to share via desktop apps. Also add in the NAS and you have three copies before you consider RAID or BTRFS or anything. Replace Dropbox with syncthing and you have multiple folders and can choose which folders go to which devices. Put a NAS at a second location and you have the ability to power up and power down the remote…

Couldn’t you do an independent “NAS to Glacier” (or similar)?

Genuinely interested as I was planning to spend some time this Xmas season along your lines and I am missing the same point.

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

#59

Post by ggpsv »

buro9 wrote: post #47
Gys wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I like about Dropbox is all files are available (browsable) from their ios app. Do you happen to use a similar app for remote browsing?

I use Tailscale to make my home network available from my phone, and then an app called Cx File Explorer to be able to fully navigate the file systems involved and view or download any file from it. I also use Plex to get all media on my phone, and that's actually my primary interface and so I very seldom ever need to ensure I'm connected to Tailscale or browsing, as what I need to access via phone is not usually fil…

This is my main gripe with Tailscale too, at least for personal use. What are you thinking of using instead? Headscale?

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

#60

Post by buro9 »

freetanga wrote: post #58
buro9 wrote: post #17

Syncthing is a dream. Photos sync'd from phone to laptop making pics taken instantly available to share via desktop apps. Also add in the NAS and you have three copies before you consider RAID or BTRFS or anything. Replace Dropbox with syncthing and you have multiple folders and can choose which folders go to which devices. Put a NAS at a second location and you have the ability to power up and power down the remote…

Couldn’t you do an independent “NAS to Glacier” (or similar)? Genuinely interested as I was planning to spend some time this Xmas season along your lines and I am missing the same point.

I'm currently using a remote NAS as my backup to my local NAS.

At 35TB of data it will take a lot of time and money for me to back this with S3 or Glacier... so mostly my object storage scenario is to accelerate and make more available a working set of files I use everywhere and often, rather than to backup / sync the majority of files.

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