Cloud Storage Business

[robertbanking]

Hello you very wonderful and intelligent people that make up this forum. I truly hope you are doing well and that you are happy and healthy.

I am finding as i run a small digital marketing business, the amount of customer data, email addresses, website designs and agreements is building up on my hard drive, which then slows my laptop down. I was wondering does anyone please host there data on a cloud service only and not on there hard drive please? Lastly how safe is it to rely on one cloud provider with your data, i presume if they had financial issues or was declaring bankruptcy they would give you a period of time to download any data please? If anyone kindly had any thoughts on this i would be forever grateful and thankful.

Sending you all lots of good wishes and i truly hope that you achieve massive success with your business goals and have a wonderful life. Very best wishes everyone.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Google? MS?

 

[clyde123]

If you don't keep your own secure data backups, then you're not placing any value on it.

Data centres can burn down. It does happen.
Companies go bust and the last thing they'll be bothered about is your data, if you haven't bothered to protect it yourself.
There are cyber attacks every day. Just because it's "in the cloud" does not make it safe. In fact, the bigger the target, the more likely it is to be targetted.

If you value your data, you need to look after it. Nobody else is going to.

 

[fisicx]

@robertbanking - just buy an external HDD. Cheap as chips

 

[Scalloway]

I would have an online backup account as well as a local one. As well as the data centre burning down there is the possibility that your house burns down. I read a while back about somebody who had their laptop stolen with all their research data on it. The backup HDDs were stolen too.

 

[Szymon]

For a good backup, you should follow the 3-2-1 rule. That is

- 3 at least three copies, including the original. This will mean client data( original), cloud, and something else for you.
- 2 at least two different mediums. It is not a good idea if you plan to keep it in 3 different clouds or on three different hard drives. But putting it on NAS and cloud will work great.
- 1 at least one off-site. Your local hard drive can be stolen, and data entry can be burned. For all cloud lovers, your cloud account can be blocked.

For local storage, I advise using something like Synology NAS (I am using it) or QNAS. Both solutions are pretty good and comparable, allowing you to start using them quickly and easily. You can always build your own TrueNAS solution, which might be better than the previous ones but will require more time and learning. I am not sure which one is cheaper.

 

[DontAsk]

I was wondering does anyone please host there data on a cloud service only and not on there hard drive please?

Only idiots do that.

Lastly how safe is it to rely on one cloud provider with your data,

It's not.

See the recent Australian insurer that had all it's data accidentally wiped by their cloud provider. I think it was Amazon. Even the cloud providers backup was wiped. Fortunately they had other backups to rebuild from.

If you don't control the hardware you do not control the data.

 

[cj_]

Hi robert,
Your laptop shouldn't slow down due to accumulated documents on your hard drive, unless there is little space left on it. You can check this by right clicking on your C: drive in FileExplorer and then clicking Properties. If the available space sits below 5GB, for a modern PC with Windows 10/11, you're running out of space.

I am aware of people who host their data in a server-dependent setting, for example, on Nextcloud. Regarding the question about thin clients, the answer depends on the specific situation. In the education industry, for instance, it's been known that cloud providers who are losing some of their cake, sometimes make it difficult for customers to retrieve their data for local storage. So the viability and convenience of server-dependent solutions can vary based on the provider and circumstances.

/cj_

 

[Socio South West]

Remember that The Cloud is just someone else's computer - which as others have said is just as prone to destruction, failure etc as your own local machines. And you only have to look at the pandemonium a bad update caused globally last week......
It is also open to hacking or others gaining access to the information - and you have no sign or clue that anyone else has looked at/downloaded your data, so protect your data as best you can if you do use the cloud, and retain anything sensitive locally.

Local HDD backup is extremely wise, and not expensive. Just remember to program a structured backup as described above regularly to make sure your roll back in the event of failure isnt that great.