Time to evaluate NAS or Cloud storage

[engine]

There are pluses and minuses with local NAS and Cloud-based storage.

I've reached the stage where i'm thinking of upgrading the current NAS drive system, and considering a number of aspects, including: Energy use, convenience, security, hard drive availability, drive reliability, etc.

Anyone with current thinking, considering how Cloud-based is now quite common.

[not2easy]

I prefer storage I can get to without a connection so I'm still using portable drives and thumb drives, now much more capacity than even a few years ago. Today I needed to run an OS update, and just the download has me unable to use my regular desktop so I needed to run backups on that before starting the download. (it is huge at 13.8GB and the connection soo0Oo slow It is offline for the next 5 - 6 hours.) It took about 10 minutes for a full HD backup but if I had to upload, I'd still be working on that.

Networked equipment is another story, but I prefer offline storage.

[Martin Potter]

I agree with not2easy. In spite of having a cloud storage account (Sync) for several years, I have not entrusted them with back-up data for my website or any other part of my life. All of my back-ups are on portable drives and a few big thumb drives. The simplicity, convenience, and security (though not in that order) of these media make them winners. Mind you, my needs are small compared with those of some other users, and there might come a day when I change my mind about this. But for the time being ...

[engine]

In some respects, it's interesting that some things don't change.
The difference for me is having a media server on the NAS which means my music and videos are available on speakers and TVs in any room, as well as available to me online while i'm travelling. This is in addition to the important backups of sites and their data.

I'm more inclined to retain the NAS and to spread the load with some less important backups in the cloud. I do use the cloud, and one service in particular has been excellent.

[tangor]

I simply prefer to have in-house for not only convenience, but security and full control.

Nice as some cloud solutions seem, it is still capped by the speed of ISP/What you spend. I can't justify a pay-a-bazillion PER MONTH for really fast connections for "backups" and such when some spinning rust or flash can do the same thing at the hardware level for significantly less expenditure.

YMMV

On the other hand, one really does need to go through the "collection" of "collected" and prune out the junk/duplicate/ancient backups, etc. Some times packrat behavior needs to be addressed and moved off to static storage.

Speaking from experience!

[engine]

It's important to reiterate, I use this as a mediaserver, in addition to backups.
The real security comes with the addition of off-site backups.

I wonder if I already have the best solution with a mix of each!

[tangor]

I agree with the off site backup!. Have two locations secured off site for the drives/flash I deposit there. Just haven't seen a reason for cloud services at this point. Have no control over those.