Online Storage

[Axle Hongsnort 208]

Over the years the family has ended up with too many options. Drop box from the beginning for taxes, mortgage and personal stuff, then got into the Apple ecosystem with Iphones mostly for photos (with storage fees now, amplified with kids) and i’ve had a gmail address forever with minimal use of their storage.

 

I’m looking to consolidate everything and am curious what others do.

[ztejas 43450]

I like Google but part of why I use it is that I'm on android and so it syncs pretty seamlessly. It also seems fairly cheap (there's no way it isn't cheaper than Apple, but I'm sure there's cheaper solutions out there).

Do you have anything against physical storage? If I was trying to consolidate across a bunch of services - especially if it's sensitive stuff like family photos and tax returns - my first move would be dump everything on an external HDD. 

[TKthunder2 4991]

https://www.westerndigital.com/products/cloud-storage/wd-my-cloud-home#WDBVXC0020HWT-NESN

[Sam Lin 3559]

Pick your poison. Dropbox, Microsoft Onedrive, Google One, Apple iCloud are the large consumer options. All have their issues with privacy and policy, but you really just want to pick the one that is most convenient for your device ecosystem. Pay extra attention if you want a client app that seamlessly mirrors data as a virtual drive on your local PCs. Cost isn't a huge variable any more.

[52-80 19159]

im stuck paying for 100gb of google drive because im too lazy to transfer all the stuff over to icloud where i have a large family plan for the old folks iphone camera use.

i like google drive has more conventional and granular controls where icloud i havent yet wrapped my head around

 

[Axle Hongsnort 208]

Looks like for a family like ours with a combo of mac’s and pc’s, gmail accounts for work and personal and several iphones that going all in with google with their photo app coupled with google drive should let us kill drop box and apple storage upgrades. The reviews indicate the google photo apps plays nicely with apple.

I’ve got a slew of old hard drives I’ve historically used for taxes, mortgage and stuff but if they ultimately require cloud backup as a fail safe measure then i think i’m ready to surrender fully to the cloud gods.

[Francisco 2.0 32393]

Apple family here.  I pay for their 2 TB storage @ $10 a month.  It backs up every iDevice that me, my wife and our 2 kids have, and also stores every digital pic I've ever taken in the iCloud Drive feature, along with anything else important. Right now, I'm using around half of that.

It's not as good as Dropbox, but everything we have already can access it without needing to install dropbox, maintain logins for that service, etc.

I do have a Dropbox, but only the free tier, and use it primarily as an additional backup for certain things.

I also have a 24TB WD NAS that contains everything in the iCloud Drive, along with movies and TV shows.  The NAS contents are backed up to a 18TB WD external, along with a few 5TB WD externals as well every month or so that gets taken to my office at work to keep off site.

 

 

[Axle Hongsnort 208]

Apple family here.  I pay for their 2 TB storage @ $10 a month.  It backs up every iDevice that me, my wife and our 2 kids have, and also stores every digital pic I've ever taken in the iCloud Drive feature, along with anything else important. Right now, I'm using around half of that.
It's not as good as Dropbox, but everything we have already can access it without needing to install dropbox, maintain logins for that service, etc.
I do have a Dropbox, but only the free tier, and use it primarily as an additional backup for certain things.
I also have a 24TB WD NAS that contains everything in the iCloud Drive, along with movies and TV shows.  The NAS contents are backed up to a 18TB WD external, along with a few 5TB WD externals as well every month or so that gets taken to my office at work to keep off site.
 
 

Any thoughts on how the apple storage works with an ancillary PC? I’ve got pretty basic needs to just save “family business” docs (pdf, xls, sheets, etc) in an organized folder hierarchy that we’d create. I’ll never use a Mac for work and vice versa for my wife. And the whole family uses Iphones coupled with gmail reliance for personal and now work.

[Francisco 2.0 32393]

Just now, Axle Hongsnort said:

Any thoughts on how the apple storage works with an ancillary PC? I’ve got pretty basic needs to just save “family business” docs (pdf, xls, sheets, etc) in an organized folder hierarchy that we’d create. I’ll never use a Mac for work and vice versa for my wife. And the whole family uses Iphones coupled with gmail reliance for personal and now work.

 Never used the iCloud windows client, so I have no thoughts on that.

Some reddit threads say it sucks, some say it works well.  Probably like anything, YMMV.

 

 

[Goofyboy 3293]

I’m starting this process now. I have an old external drive that I need to update and want cloud plus new external as a back up.

I’ll be following along.

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

Unless something has changed, alumni of UT get unlimited google drive space. Just have to go set up a UT email address and what not. It doesn’t have all the features of a paid account, but for storage, it’s great.

[Nightfly 61]

On 1/18/2022 at 9:19 AM, Patricio Swayze said:

Unless something has changed, alumni of UT get unlimited google drive space. Just have to go set up a UT email address and what not. It doesn’t have all the features of a paid account, but for storage, it’s great.

Someone (maybe you!) told me about this on the old site. Game changer. 2TB and counting. 

[immamac 42850]

You also get 1TB of storage with surly treefiddy.

I have considered setting up a cloud storage platform just for this community that is more generic and not message board focused. If there is interest I'd be down to do it for no monthly cost and only buy in + assessments if drives fail or something.

20TB is 400 bucks basically now and will last 5 years. 2PB is 40k. So if 400 people spent 100 bucks you'd have 2.5TB each in redundant storage forever or just less than 1.50/month 

 

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

Someone (maybe you!) told me about this on the old site. Game changer. 2TB and counting. 

Welp, so much for that. I just received an email from UT saying they will no longer provide unlimited storage. Starting November 2022 it will be reduced to 1 gig. That sucks.

[abuelo gringo 321]

1 hour ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Welp, so much for that. I just received an email from UT saying they will no longer provide unlimited storage. Starting November 2022 it will be reduced to 1 gig. That sucks.

Access to UT Google apps (including Drive) will go away at that time for all who are not students, faculty or staff.  The 1 gig is the email storage only.

Quote

• Students, faculty, and staff will be limited to 5GB of storage for their Gmail and Google Workspace accounts. 
   
• Alumni, former students, and retirees will be limited to 1GB of email storage and will have access to Gmail only.
•  
• Alumni and Retiree accounts will be limited to 1 GB of email. Google Workspace applications other than Gmail, including Drive, will no longer be available. You must reduce your Gmail storage below 1 GB and move files stored in Drive or other Google Workspace applications to a new location.

Knowledge Base Article - Service Portal (service-now.com)

That really sucks, as I have beaucoup storage out there.  Most is backup, but some I need to move elsewhere.

Too good to last, I guess.

 

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

Knowledge Base Article - Service Portal (service-now.com)
That really sucks, as I have beaucoup storage out there.  Most is backup, but some I need to move elsewhere.
Too good to last, I guess.
 

Yep. I mean, how did they think that would work in the first place with so many alumni, student and faculty.

I’ll just scale up my other gmail account as it has all the features the free UT one didn’t have and transfer it all over. I like that google now has face recognition to access the drive.

[Nightfly 61]

3 hours ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Welp, so much for that. I just received an email from UT saying they will no longer provide unlimited storage. Starting November 2022 it will be reduced to 1 gig. That sucks.

Guess I jinxed it.