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This is why I don't trust my own videos/photos/documents/notes/etc. to "the cloud". How many examples like this have there been where peoples stuff just disappears one day with no way to bring it back? More than I can count.

Though, saying I don't trust my files to the cloud is not the same as saying I don't use the cloud. I keep two copies of all of my files in 2 physical location. However, both of those physical location are within 10 miles of each other, so I also mirror everything to the cloud. That is, I always have 3 copies of all of my files, 2 in physical location and 1 in the cloud.

I know so many people that have all of their important videos and photos in one location (their phone, the cloud, a hard drive in a drawer, etc.) I can't imagine how they sleep at night knowing everything could go poof at any time. I've tried explaining this to some of them, but they think I'm paranoid.

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I need to add cloud mirroring. What cloud service are you using?

I was about to give Backblaze Personal a try, but stopped because I don't like how they handle encryption. If I'm understanding their site correctly, restoring requires giving them your key. I'd prefer something where decrypting for restoration is client side.

I'm currently contemplating Backblaze B2 or Amazon Glacier using Arq or Duplicati[1] or something like that. (Or maybe using something I write myself which can better adapt to my specific needs).

Also eyeing OneDrive, since I have 1 TB of that from my Office 365 subscription, and am only using a whopping 300 MB of it.

Hmmm...could I make a large disk image and store the .dmg file on OneDrive, and then mount that image and use it as a Time Machine volume, thereby getting a cloud Time Machine backup?

[1] or duplicity or duplicacy...I'm not sure which of the three similarly named backup programs I'm thinking of!

Edit: looks like the answer to that last question is no. Time Machine does not seem to allow using a mounted image as a Time Machine volume.

For offsite backups I use Arq with Amazon, but the remote storage provider largely doesn’t matter all that much. Data is encrypted. Choose based on price.

I'm still on crashplan. I prepaid for 5 years, so I've been moved to the small business plan since my 5 years aren't up yet. At some point I'll probably need to look at moving my data somewhere else. Anyone have any recommendations on the cheapest place to backup 3TB of data?

Arq goes to OneDrive too. Just remember to exclude the Arq files from files that are downloaded by default if you're running the client. I'd look at B2 as well, but for the few terabytes I'd use it for it's a bit expensive with the plummeting Australian Dollar.

"Just remember to exclude the Arq files from files that are downloaded by default if you're running the client."

Funny you mention that. I'd been trying to figure out why my disks were running out of space. Turns out my Amazon Drive desktop client was syncing the encrypted Arq files back to my laptop, then those were being fed back into the Arq backup set. You can imagine how quickly that spins out of control space-requirements-wise.

By the way, with backblaze you can specify your own key. They just can't help you if you forget, and you loose all your data :)

You can specify your own key, yes.

Now how do you use that key to restore without feeding it into the website?

According to this, you still have to throw it in the website: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8169040

I'm pretty happy with duplicati and backblaze b2 since crashplan stopped business with consumers.

Exactly, the cloud should be used as a secondary backup, not a primary device. Using it as the latter is no better than you keeping everything in one place at your house.

> Using it as the latter is no better than you keeping everything in one place at your house.

Not their house. Their neighbour's house. How long ago did this xkcd came out? https://xkcd.com/1150/

Dec 21, 2012

Trust the cloud? Hell I won't even purchase music that isn't on CD or LP. If my access disappears for whatever reason (hacked, I've posted something politically distasteful on a linked service, whatever), even if I get it back, I could be a long time without my collection.

I have however accepted that as a possibility (no matter how unlikely) with Steam as I don't really go back to play old games, but I expect the music I purchase to accessible to me for decades without question.

People look at me like I'm crazy for not giving in to streaming services and insisting on maintaining a music library. It's hard for me to avoid concluding that these people simply don't really enjoy music.

I don't think it's that, really, that streaming users don't really enjoy music, it's just that streaming services simplify things, removing the need to handle physical media. Never underestimate the warm, convenient glow of laziness that streaming services enable.

I do think that there can be something lost when listening to an assortment of single tracks as opposed to cohesive albums. Getting a new album and letting it play all the way through definitely feels like a different experience to me than putting on a playlist of assorted tracks.

With the prevalence of streaming music I wonder if more and more artists are abandoning the creation of cohesive albums?

There's also the issue that, I think, that compressed audio files are particularly susceptible to bit-rot (perhaps compressed files of all kinds?). If you don't have a physical copy to re-rip from then you could well be boned.

I only listen to albums with Spotify. I have over 100K listens on last.fm and 90% of it is with Spotify and listening to full albums. That doesn’t have anything to do with streaming. A lot of “casual” people are always going to go after singles mostly as soon as that’s available.

I do think though since so many people don’t listen to albums anymore some shift will probably happen over time. Though it seems like nothing has changed too much yet and it has been a few years.

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