Storage

RedPen

Where can I get help?
I need help with my IT storage.
I have an apple desktop, laptop, iPad, and 2 iPhones, 3 external hard drives. I use 2 external hard to back up my laptop weekly. I pay for extra storage on "The Cloud", but it's been full for months. I don't want to pay for more. I have photos on my iPhones that aren't backed up. I regularly delete photos and videos I don't want to keep. I need to keep everything safe.
I would happily pay someone to sort it all out for me and then tell me what I should be doing going forward. Does this service exists? If so how much does it cost?

forgotmyname

If you have external drives why are you paying for cloud storage?

RedPen

Because I bought the iCloud storage years before getting the external hard drives AND the iCloud storage is useful when I'm in one place but need a document that would ordinarily be in a different place. Now I feel like I'm in a situation where nowhere has enough storage for me to have everything in one place to sort out my storage problem from, let alone work from.

forgotmyname

Buy your own cloud in the form of a NAS.  Virtually unlimited storage that you control.

GDB2222

RedPen said:

Because I bought the iCloud storage years before getting the external hard drives AND the iCloud storage is useful when I'm in one place but need a document that would ordinarily be in a different place. Now I feel like I'm in a situation where nowhere has enough storage for me to have everything in one place to sort out my storage problem from, let alone work from.

I would put all my existing photos on to both back up drives, then delete them all from the cloud and the other devices. That is simple to do and will free up space on the cloud for new stuff.  

You may also find that your emails are taking up a lot of space in your cloud storage. 

forgotmyname

I have over 40 email addresses in Thunderbird dating back over 20 years with many thousands of emails spread across them
all and it takes 5.96GB  6000MB which is probaly an extreme case and the average user probably only uses a small fraction
of that amount.

Emails should not take a huge amount unless they have thousands of images or video files attached. A 1TB backup drive should
be enough for average users and an 8TB for those saving a lot of images etc.

Only those storing a large amount of video will need more.

Vitor

How many TB of storage are you looking for?

RedPen

IvanOpinion said:

How much data do you actually have? Not counting windows/software, backups, duplicates, just original data.
How much cloud storage do you have?
What size are the various disk drives?

This is probably the point where my knowledge of IT drops off and I needs an expert. I don't know because I have stuff on my desktop, laptop, iPad and 2 iPhones and some of it is duplicated I'm sure. I'm just an average person running a small sole trading business, I can't need tat much storage, BUT I don't know how to proceed by myself and need an expert to sit down with me.

RedPen

forgotmyname said:

I have over 40 email addresses in Thunderbird dating back over 20 years with many thousands of emails spread across them
all and it takes 5.96GB  6000MB which is probaly an extreme case and the average user probably only uses a small fraction
of that amount.

Emails should not take a huge amount unless they have thousands of images or video files attached. A 1TB backup drive should
be enough for average users and an 8TB for those saving a lot of images etc.

Only those storing a large amount of video will need more.

OK This is reassuring. thank you. my external drives are 2 TB each. 

GDB2222

I ran a small business for many years on this PC, with 250GB of storage. Most of my business files are very small. If I send a letter, for example, it's most unlikely to be more than 1000 words. 

The 250GB hard disk is only half full, and most of that is personal stuff, not business. All the important stuff is backed up to my 15GB Google drive (which is only half full).

My point is this: If you work out what you really need to back up, how much does that come to?