I’ve put a few files on my free 15GB Google Drive. The interface works well. I like being able to create a shareable link to a folder or file. The big downside is dealing with people that don’t use gmail.
I successfully shared a folder for read access. I just emailed them a shareable link. I tried setting up a folder they could drop files into. Couldn’t do it unless they gave me a gmail address. You have to specifically give a gmail address update privs.
I’m ready to buy a Tarabyte of cloud storage.
I plan to try Drop Box next. Initially with the free 2G storage they offer. See how the interface works. I’m pretty underwhelmed the free drive is only 2GB. That’s pretty useless.
Both offer a Tarabyte for $10 a month.
Who else should I consider for cloud storage?
I’d really like 1.5 Tarabyte or 2.
Sync by folder would be very helpful. For example, if I buy a piece of sheet music. I save that in my sheet music folder. I want it to automatically save a copy to the cloud, sheet music folder. So both folders stay in sync.
I’ve been using pCloud for about six months now. I really like it. It syncs everything I tell it too instantly and accurately, unlike Google Drive and OneDrive (which have syncing functions, but don’t work very well). I’m not into the sharing functions, but they claim to be awesome at it.
A couple of months ago, I sprung for the lifetime (99 years) 2 TB plan for $250.
I’d also like to know the answer, because Dropbox is no longer an option I’m willing to consider. I have used it for years, for free, to store a paltry 4.4GB of stuff. I recently was informed that my free space was promotional and now I have to pay for anything over 4GB. Fine, I am totally fine with paying for a service.
The problem is they want me to pay $100/year for 0.4 GB of extra stuff. I find this outrageous.
That said, if you have a lot of stuff to store, it’s hard to beat Dropbox. I was really happy with it for many years.
I agree Google Drive can be a pain. I’ve convinced my writers group to migrate our shared folder to Google Drive from Dropbox and they are grumbling about it already. But you can store up to 15GB for free and their next tier up (100GB) is only $2/month. That is much more reasonable.
I’ve been very happy with onedrive. Best part is if you use Bing as your search engine you can earn points which i use to renew office 365 each year which comes with 5 tb storage.
In another thread about computer backups, someone recommended Backblaze. Five bucks a month or fifty bucks a year for an unlimited backup. Note that I can’t personally endorse it, as I’m not a customer.
The only thing is the OP seems to want online storage that’s accessible by others and I don’t think this is suitable for that.
Google Drive does have the ability to share files with non-Google users. You have to turn on ‘link sharing’ (or similar - I can’t remember the exact name for it) for the file, which gives you a URL. Anyone that you give the URL to can download the file. The downside is that there’s nothing stopping that URL being passed on beyond your control, and your only option would be to turn off link sharing for that file.
Google Drive can also sync with folders on your computer. You need to install the Google Drive app (available for all the major operating systems, as far as I know). Once done, you’ll get a Google Drive folder. Anything in that folder will be synced to any other devices which have Drive installed, and also to the Google Drive website.
Which is precisely what’s wrong with it. Other services let you pick and choose what to sync without having to rearrange your hard drive. Forcing the user to dump everything into their special folder is ridiculous.
As God is my witness, you’ll never lose data again.
When you ask what is “most secure”, it’s useful to think about the threat model. Most secure against losing the data? Most secure against someone else getting it?
When I was agonizing over what to do about CrashPlan (and I’ll agonize again over it when my Business account expires), I found:
B2 by Backblaze: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html
It seemed to be the winner in my research for a storage solution (first 10Gb free, and additional gigabytes after that are very cheap).
Whether it has the sharing features you want I can’t say. I am not, yet, a customer.
This was my thread, probably, because my hard drive died on me.
I did decide to use Backblaze and am now a paying customer, but Backblaze isn’t cloud storage, it’s cloud backup, which means it’s not really designed for quick and easy access to the thing you’re backing up. It’s more like a failsafe measure to prevent the loss of data. In order to get your files you have to access them either via zip file download or on a USB that they ship to you.
It works for me as a backup measure, providing continuous backup up my files in the event of a catastrophe, but it’s not like cloud storage.
That depends on what you intend to use it for. If you want it to provide remote access to data or sync multiple devices, pretty much any conventional cloud storage will do the job. If you want it for remote backup of data you don’t expect to access very often, you want a “glacier” plan (significantly cheaper, but you may have to wait a little while for the series of tubes to open up for you).
As for security, do you mean “certainty that the data will be there when I want access to it” or “certainty that nobody else can get access to it”? For the former, the obvious solution is to use two cloud services; for the latter, the obvious solution is to encrypt everything before uploading it.
My biggest concern is the long term stability of the company. Will those servers be there in 15 years? How well are they backing up everyone’s files?
It would be pretty traumatic to have a terabyte of data corrupted and lost. Hard drive reliability has gone down significantly in the past few years. Hard Drives used to last a long, long time. I used to buy used ones from Ebay and build pc’s. I got 6 or more years use from them. Used! I wouldn’t do that now with the crap they sell today.
I no longer trust the drives in my pc. That’s why I’m looking into cloud storage.
I address the problem with quantity over quality. Cost per-terabyte is still trending down and since around the USB3.0 interface time-frame, external local connectivity is pretty cheap, easy and fast enough as well. Depending on storage access requirements for bandwidth and number of users, it’s not really very expensive, difficult or complicated to safely store all your own data - far more favorably than any service provider will offer to do so.
My system is to use two portable drives (each with a VeraCrypt data volume and a small non-encrypted volume with backups of software install files) and keep local copy and one remote copy (rotating them occasionally to bring the remote copy up to date).