"Cloud" question for very old newbie.

Legacy_user

I am trying desperately hard to keep my 73yr old brain active and try to learn as much as I can about the "net".

One word that I have avoided is "cloud" so therefore know nothing about it. People say they have things stored in the "cloud". My son-in-law asked me why I have just bought a memory stick to back-up photo's when I can keep them in the "cloud".

It now seems that someone somewhere is requested to explain in easy terms, how I become part of the growing number of people who use the "cloud".

Hundreds of photo's available in My Pictures and duplicated in Picasa are now in two groups on an external hard drive and on the memory stick. I am of the opinion that somehow they can be sent to the cloud, where only I can access them hopefully and the external hard drive and memory stick will not be required?.

I await with interest.

marlot

Instead of storing photos on your own hard disk, in a cloud world you're storing them on a disk on someone else's computer. You connect to their computer through the internet.

They may charge a fee for storing your photos for you, or they may give you the disk space for 'free' (eg. by making their income from adverts).

Advantages of cloud:
If your computer dies, your photos are safe
If you use a mobile device (such as a tablet), you can access your photos by downloading them

Concerns of using cloud
What happens if your photos are stolen?
What happens if the cloud supplier goes bust? Have you lost all your photos?
What if you cannot connect to the internet for any reason?

marlot

Forgot to add, you need a fast internet connection or be prepared to wait whilst photos are uploaded/downloaded

itch_for_a_glitch

Burn 'em to DVD disc.

JJ_Egan

You can always have your own personal cloud .
Usually known as a NAS .
2TB hard drive in a box that connects to your PC via Ethernet cable .
Can access or stream content from this box even with PC off via Internet .
My 2TB Western Digital My Book Live is used to stream videos over WiFi to my tablet . Plus the rest of the family can access files from many miles away via web browser .

jje

John_Gray

If your experience of life has caused you to trust people and organisations you have never met, you would probably be happy using "the cloud".

If, however, you wish to be a master of your own destiny, carry on with backups to USB Flash Drives, USB External Disks, DVDs, and so on - but back up regularly to at least two different media types so that if anything goes wrong with one device, you have all your Stuff available on another.

System

Thanks for your swift responses. No doubt others may follow. I will read and learn then decide. Coincidently, I have recently moved into the Fibre Optic world so maybe the internet connection is fast enough.

Oblivion

It seems we see a news story every week about some major servers being hacked and personal data compromised. Personally I'm not about to entrust any of my data to the cloud.

I have numerous external USB hard drives ranging from 350GB to 2TB which I regularly back up all my data to and rotate one off site in my mother's fire safe as a 'just in case of fire / burglary' measure.

ballyblack

If you use Picasa just upload them all to Free Google PicasaWeb photos(Cloud), like I do

and if Google goes bust (highly unlikely) we are all doomed




.

paddyrg

Just for reference though, 'cloud' is really a meaningless term to group together a load of technologies, and it's widely used by marketing people. In reality 'the cloud' generally is used to mean 'a server somewhere on the internet that you don't have to worry about'. There are several competing 'cloud' providers, they all offer much of a muchness.

System

paddyrg wrote: »

Just for reference though, 'cloud' is really a meaningless term to group together a load of technologies, and it's widely used by marketing people. In reality 'the cloud' generally is used to mean 'a server somewhere on the internet that you don't have to worry about'. There are several competing 'cloud' providers, they all offer much of a muchness.

Would you or do you use a free one? and if so, which one?