I wanted some extra back-ups for my digital photos, the ones going back 20 years that could never be taken again. I already have sensible local back-ups, but I wanted to go "offsite" by having them in the cloud, just as an extra layer of assurance.
I shopped around, British Telecom's was rubbish, Dropbox too expensive (I don't need 2Tb... yet), and iCloud is mostly about device syncing. OneDrive... hmmm.... not sure.
In the end I settled on Google Photos because 1) I already had a google account and 2) most of the images fall well below their "high quality" image compression. Many of the images were taking with a 1.2 megapixel Kodak camera (DC... something or other, I can't remember). It was an awesome camera, my first digital, a lot of fun at the time.
Anyway, I spent a couple of days uploading everything to Photos, organising the files into albums, all that kind of thing. Not a single problem was encountered. The whole thing went as good as I could expect, so I kept going. I reorganised my google drive, deleted old files, and sent a load of stuff up to it.
Finally, I decided to put my mp3 collection into Play music (which at some point will, I believe, turn into Youtube music).
Next test was to make sure I could easily get stuff back out of the cloud, which I could. Great!
So now I can access my stuff from any reasonable device, no need to worry too much about back-ups and I get to use some nice web applications along the way (Photos, Docs... yeah).
Google Photos app automatically copies images from my apple devices, so I have instant back-ups.
I still make local copies of everything, partly of out habit and partly because I am old and therefore untrusting of Big Tech (even though their security and storage is more robust than I could ever achieve at home...)
But what about the whole privacy/data snooping/Evil Empire thing? Well I did think about that. Google's business model is all about my data, they will makes sure it is well protected if only because they need it to make money. But really, it's 2020, the cloud has been around long enough and the doomocalypse never happened. I know the risks, I know about the whole privacy thing, but the convenience is worth it IMHO.
I have my extra back-ups, I still have all my local back-ups, I can get out any time I like, I have some good apps to use. Suddenly I am spending a lot less time doing maintenance and upgrades (the back-up thing is dead easy and minimal effort.) Oh, and now, operating systems don't matter any more. Aside from a web browser and file manager I haven't used any client side application software on my laptop since the back end of 2019. Mac, iOS, Android, Windows, Linux? Any of them will do.
In fact I have been very productive and creative, having a ball with this stuff. Not sure why I didn't do this earlier. Doing everything in the browser is, for me, a fluid user experience. I don't miss a beat switching apps (even though I have to go to a new window.)
There will come a point when that Dropbox option will be on the list too. I'm even tempted to fork out a couple of quid for Google One.
Which is weird considering 10 years I wouldn't have touched this stuff with a barge pole, I was a linux die-hard. I still run a linux laptop though, but there's no data on it.
I shopped around, British Telecom's was rubbish, Dropbox too expensive (I don't need 2Tb... yet), and iCloud is mostly about device syncing. OneDrive... hmmm.... not sure.
In the end I settled on Google Photos because 1) I already had a google account and 2) most of the images fall well below their "high quality" image compression. Many of the images were taking with a 1.2 megapixel Kodak camera (DC... something or other, I can't remember). It was an awesome camera, my first digital, a lot of fun at the time.
Anyway, I spent a couple of days uploading everything to Photos, organising the files into albums, all that kind of thing. Not a single problem was encountered. The whole thing went as good as I could expect, so I kept going. I reorganised my google drive, deleted old files, and sent a load of stuff up to it.
Finally, I decided to put my mp3 collection into Play music (which at some point will, I believe, turn into Youtube music).
Next test was to make sure I could easily get stuff back out of the cloud, which I could. Great!
So now I can access my stuff from any reasonable device, no need to worry too much about back-ups and I get to use some nice web applications along the way (Photos, Docs... yeah).
Google Photos app automatically copies images from my apple devices, so I have instant back-ups.
I still make local copies of everything, partly of out habit and partly because I am old and therefore untrusting of Big Tech (even though their security and storage is more robust than I could ever achieve at home...)
But what about the whole privacy/data snooping/Evil Empire thing? Well I did think about that. Google's business model is all about my data, they will makes sure it is well protected if only because they need it to make money. But really, it's 2020, the cloud has been around long enough and the doomocalypse never happened. I know the risks, I know about the whole privacy thing, but the convenience is worth it IMHO.
I have my extra back-ups, I still have all my local back-ups, I can get out any time I like, I have some good apps to use. Suddenly I am spending a lot less time doing maintenance and upgrades (the back-up thing is dead easy and minimal effort.) Oh, and now, operating systems don't matter any more. Aside from a web browser and file manager I haven't used any client side application software on my laptop since the back end of 2019. Mac, iOS, Android, Windows, Linux? Any of them will do.
In fact I have been very productive and creative, having a ball with this stuff. Not sure why I didn't do this earlier. Doing everything in the browser is, for me, a fluid user experience. I don't miss a beat switching apps (even though I have to go to a new window.)
There will come a point when that Dropbox option will be on the list too. I'm even tempted to fork out a couple of quid for Google One.
Which is weird considering 10 years I wouldn't have touched this stuff with a barge pole, I was a linux die-hard. I still run a linux laptop though, but there's no data on it.
My Four Point Test of Cloud
- Is it easy to upload?
- Is it easy and fun to use?
- Is it accessible across platforms?
- Is it easy to get stuff back?