I have lots of Google Drive storage that is free but almost never used. I basically don't trust any of the big cloud storage providers and would only store files that are public or use very strong encryption. I have come up with some alternatives. One is to set up private storage on a VPS. It doesn't take much of a VPS to just do FTP and for a few dollars a year you could get a VPS with lots of storage and not much CPU and memory. Connect via SFTP and you can set up backups to another VPS via Rsync among other methods. The main disadvantage here is that there is limited backup security compared to a cloud storage provider but the privacy advantage is huge. The other alternative is Usenet. The same technology that is used for posting pirate files can be used for cloud storage. It is very easy to create a group that won't be indexed by usenet web indexers and thus invisible to the web and only accessible to a newsreader on a paid usenet account. A little obfuscation would make that group hard to find even with a reader unless you knew the exact name. I would use very strong encryption for anything uploaded this way, a couple layers of it at least. File retention on Usenet servers is around 3 years at bare minimum and some providers have much more. The file will be replicated to every other Usenet server so the backup security will be excellent. If you use the standard yEnc protocol and add some signature verification in the encrypted files, you will be sure to be downloading what you uploaded.
I am too lazy to upload files to the cloud. I do use Google Drive occasionally to store files where I deem privacy a non-issue. Why Google? Simply because Google is a big company and the odds of them shutting down is almost non-existent in my book.
Get this great offer while it's still available. Zoolz Cloud Storage | 100GB FREE Lifetime Sorry guys, they are only giving away 100,000. Be quick.
I was looking for a second cloud storage provider two days ago, and came across this deal. One issue with it, is that you have to wait to restore data. I'm having some issues with selecting folders to be backup up. But I'm sure they will be able to help me get that fixed.
Unfortunately offer is not available in my country - but I am using Zoolz via a previous good value offer ... I have found their support to be very responsive and helpful.
That looks good, Roger. The video on that page is a good explanation of how Zoolz works. Zoolz Home Guide
How safe are the files there? Are they privacy orientated. It's a UK based so part of Five Eyes program. What option did you eventually go with?
It should be easy to opt out of auto renewal. If you do get charged when you don't want to pay for another year, they will refund you. I was an IDrive customer and cancelled just after a year, so I would not be charged for another year. Recently when IDrive sent me an email about a discount they had, I tried to reactivate my account. I had forgotten they had already billed me for the second year of service at the full amount, otherwise I would not have reactivated my account. This turned out to be quite a hassle, due to a lack of response to my emails at times. When my account was finally reactivated, I saw the unpaid bill for the second year of service. I didn't want to pay the bill, so I did not use IDrive again. Shortly after that IDrive did charge the bill to my credit card. However, I talked to them via their online chat, explained the situation and they were happy to refund the money.
Neither. They are both just approaches that have occurred to me that I have tested. I don't use cloud storage but if I did, I would use something other than commercial providers and either or both would work for me. The Usenet experiment was done just because it was possible. Usenet is something like the stem cell of the modern internet and can be used for a lot of different things. Forums, social networking and cloud storage are all exist on it in a primitive form. It is a very simple and robust data retention, transmission and storage protocol.
I get 25 GB of cloud storage that comes with Total Defense Unlimited license. I don't have a lot to backup though.
CrashPlan Home no longer an option. https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/22/16184430/crashplan-home-shutting-down https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/consumer/nextsteps/
I store my pics on Dropbox with back up to SmugMug. Both allow easy sharing and are large enough not to go under.
I have Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive accounts. Of those I currently use Dropbox for a few files.