Cloud Storage that's Reasonably Priced

zagubov

I'm looking for a cloud storage for my macbook. I'll need to store up to 100 Gb over multiple computers (not phones) for a couple of years. 
Tempted by Idrive's Mini deal for 100Gb for under £3 per year.
I know that sounds too good to be true so I'm asking if anyone has used them and can let me know how well it works, or alternatively suggest another reasonably priced useful backup system.

DullGreyGuy

zagubov said:

I'm looking for a cloud storage for my macbook. I'll need to store up to 100 Gb over multiple computers (not phones) for a couple of years. 
Tempted by Idrive's Mini deal for 100Gb for under £3 per year.
I know that sounds too good to be true so I'm asking if anyone has used them and can let me know how well it works, or alternatively suggest another reasonably priced useful backup system.

You didnt like the suggestions in the hundreds of others threads asking the same?

Is it the same 100GB over all the devices or a different 33GB on each machine?
What percentage is photos?

You could have 2x iCloud 50gb for £24 or 1x 200gb for £36 and whilst as a percentage it's a lot more it obviously has much better native integration to your MacBook and in absolute terms its an extra 6p a day

Neil_Jones

You get what you pay for, and no guarantee you'll pay the same price next year.

a standard 1Tb external USB hard drive is showing on Amazon for £38.  That's 3p per Gigabyte (near eough) and ten times as much as the cloud storage.  Plus it'll work/be accessible when your internet isn't or something was to happen to the infrastructure of the cloud company - ie if it went bust or something or a major incident happens that takes your data... They probably won't cover it or back it up anymore than they absolutely have to.

Plus its yours.  Providing you look after it it'll last a long time.

(you can probably tell I'm not overly keen on cloud storage, I prefer physical storage that I can hold/see)

flaneurs_lobster

Given that the Idrive deal does sound too good to be true, I'd get that AND follow @Neil_Jones sensible advice to get a local HD backup too.

I've got 50GB of free cloud I scored from MEGA.nz in 2017, still working just fine as a secondary backup. Sometimes freebies are good.

booneruk

There will always be an argument over what is the best backup method. Personally I have a NAS unit with two hard drives in that are mirrored, this stores all my stuff. I have a folder on one of the drives that is mirrored up to Google Drive for my important stuff, so these files are stored in two places locally and also backed up to the cloud (via the NAS system rather than any software on a PC) - which does provide another level of safety. Imagine a house fire for example.

I subscribe to Google One, which gives me 100GB of cloud storage for £16 a year, which also helps my online photo storage.

kinger101

Neil_Jones said:

You get what you pay for, and no guarantee you'll pay the same price next year.

a standard 1Tb external USB hard drive is showing on Amazon for £38.  That's 3p per Gigabyte (near eough) and ten times as much as the cloud storage.  Plus it'll work/be accessible when your internet isn't or something was to happen to the infrastructure of the cloud company - ie if it went bust or something or a major incident happens that takes your data... They probably won't cover it or back it up anymore than they absolutely have to.

Plus its yours.  Providing you look after it it'll last a long time.

(you can probably tell I'm not overly keen on cloud storage, I prefer physical storage that I can hold/see)

You are comparing apples with oranges though.

A single USB drive is not a good way of storing data unless you are happily for it to be lost if the drive is permanently corrupted.

At the very least you need a network storage device with RAID storage.  But that doesn't give you redundancy if your house burns down.

TMSG

I've been with iDrive (albeit using their AWS-compatible e2 product) for almost two years now. First year was half price but even paying full price for 1TB now they're very much on the cheap end of things. They have been reliable and consistently fast, although I neither use their software nor the web interface.

As to USB vs cloud, I have multiple external drives which I copy backups to in rotation but I also have that 1TB cloud... precisely because of the possibility of something dramatic happening to the house.

Also, a single USB drive is certainly better than no backup but not really that secure. As @kinger101 has noted RAID is better (or of course multiple drives with a suitable backup strategy).

IvanOpinion

I have been with pCloud since 2016 and had no issues. Over christmas I set up a new PC for myself and it re-loaded all my data with no issues. Another one that seems to get good reviews is IceDrive. Neither of them will be as cheap as the the basic iDrive set up though.

zagubov

IvanOpinion said:

I have been with pCloud since 2016 and had no issues. Over christmas I set up a new PC for myself and it re-loaded all my data with no issues. Another one that seems to get good reviews is IceDrive. Neither of them will be as cheap as the the basic iDrive set up though.

Thanks for the info; my problem is that pcloud seems to becoming less and less compatible with current mac computers. I can still access it via a web browser but it used to be accessible via finder in a way similar to dropbox but much cheaper.

Icedrive looks interesting- I should check out their free version for compatibility and accessability and see how they work.