Paid cloud storage.....what are your opinions, guys?

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mikewalsh
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Paid cloud storage.....what are your opinions, guys?

Post by mikewalsh »

Afternoon, gang.

Well, I've finally "taken the plunge", as it were.

Long-term members will be aware that I have, for some years, been juggling several free cloud storage accounts in order to provide Puppy community access to all the stuff I put together for Puppians. This has included a Google Drive a/c, a MediaFire a/c, a MEGA.nz a/c, and more recently, a pCloud a/c and one called SukuDrive (which purports to offer 75 GB free storage, but I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop on this one! MEGA initially offered up to 100 GB, but that rapidly dropped away to just 20 GB...)

The trouble with all these 'free' cloud storage options is that you can never be sure if, as & when you'll lose access to everything.

Google are currently offering a month's free trial for their paid storage tiers, along with extremely reasonable monthly (or yearly) subscription rates thereafter. I've had this Google a/c since 1999, so that means it's now 25 years I've been with them. For many years, I did nothing with the a/c (initially opened to provide an email a/c for stuff I was doing at the time, and indeed, GMail was the only component I used for ages).

I've been mulling this over for quite a while now, and eventually came to the conclusion that a paid storage option would guarantee continued access to my stuff for the community. Accordingly, I now have a "Google One" a/c, which currently gives me 102 GB of storage. (That extra 2 GB came to me the very year I joined the Puppy community, in 2014.....on the 15th anniversary of opening the a/c. Google said it was a "long-service" reward for having been with them so long..!) :o :D

=================================

Now; I know many folks are rabidly anti-Google, but to be fair, in all those years they have never messed me around once, in any way at all. They've been as good as gold over odd cock-ups, and have gone out of their way to put things right ASAP.....plus, I make copious use of their app infrastructure, and I'll give them their due, everything just 'works' together seamlessly, and has made my life a lot easier in many ways over time.

You can't sneeze at £1.59 a month for 100GB of guaranteed storage. In the new year, I may explore their annual payment option, which for this particular tier works out to just £1.08 per month when paid in advance (around 25p a week).

That's NOT bad, all things considered! So; over the next few months, I shall gradually be migrating everything to a single location.....although it IS going to mean a lot of broken links for a while. For which I apologise in advance. You HAVE been warned... :roll:

What do you guys think about this kind of thing? Do any of you employ paid cloud storage.....and if so, are you happy with it?

Mike. ;)

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Re: Paid cloud storage.....what are your opinions, guys?

Post by wizard »

@mikewalsh

Thoughtful of you, Thanks :thumbup2:

You can't sneeze at £1.59 a month

I spill more wine than that. :mrgreen:

Me, still just using Sourceforge for my little stuff, works quite well.

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Re: Paid cloud storage.....what are your opinions, guys?

Post by rockedge »

It's exhausting to keep track of the different places where the stuff is.

Juggling gig's is a drag in spirit and bandwidth....upload......download Daniel Son......(cheap Karate Kid movie reference :shock: )

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Re: Paid cloud storage.....what are your opinions, guys?

Post by Chelsea80 »

@mikewalsh

I think you have made a good decision.

From your point of view It will be less stressful not having to keep tabs on where your, gratefully received by the community, contributions are all the time.

From the user point of view in having one 'home base' to go to.

I wish you well in transferring your vast amount of work.

Look forward to your future post saying "Completed".

Chelsea80

1. BionicPup32+28 19.03 - Linux 4.9.163 - lxpup - 32-pae [i686] - (UPup Bionic Beaver)
....Frugal Install - Internal HDD - Gateway MX8716b - HDD 120GB - RAM 2GB

2. Friendly-Bionic32 v1.1
....USB Stick 2GB

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Re: Paid cloud storage.....what are your opinions, guys?

Post by wiak »

rockedge wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2024 3:38 pm

It's exhausting to keep track of the different places where the stuff is.

Juggling gig's is a drag in spirit and bandwidth....upload......download Daniel Son......(cheap Karate Kid movie reference :shock: )

Did you find a new home for all the stuff you stored, Erik? If so, where is it?

https://www.tinylinux.info/
DOWNLOAD wd_multi for hundreds of 'distros' at your fingertips: viewtopic.php?p=99154#p99154
Αξίζει να μεταφραστεί;

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Re: Paid cloud storage.....what are your opinions, guys?

Post by ozsouth »

@mikewalsh - I've been able to make do with 10Gb at mediafire, but only because ally uploads most of my kernels & isos to archive.org, which has been fine till now (& probably will be again next week). Then I delete from mediafire. Have thought about paying.

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Re: Paid cloud storage.....what are your opinions, guys?

Post by mikewalsh »

@ozsouth :-

ozsouth wrote: Fri Oct 18, 2024 4:38 am

@mikewalsh - I've been able to make do with 10Gb at mediafire, but only because ally uploads most of my kernels & isos to archive.org, which has been fine till now (& probably will be again next week). Then I delete from mediafire. Have thought about paying.

Oh, I've been thinking about this for quite some time, Oz. It wasn't so bad when it was only 2 (or 3) a/cs, but now it's got up to 5 it's getting a bit ridiculous. Yes, it "spreads the load".....but it also introduces more points of possible failure into the system. If we were talking about, say, £10+ a month, I'd think long and hard about it.....but at a little over £1/month, despite being on a low(ish) income I'm not even going to notice it.

Mainly, I want to make it easier for me to organise things for myself.....and in all honesty, at those prices I'd be silly not to. It guarantees the cloud storage for me, and makes it more certain that folks here will always be able to access anything that I publish. And anything that guarantees access for the community HAS to be a good thing.

I guess I'm just altruistic.......though unfortunately, nothing will bring back the older stuff I had to delete a while back, when I was trying desperately to make room. Unless, of course, Ally has archived it? I know he's archived some of my stuff, but I couldn't say how much.....

I MAY keep the 75 GB SukuDrive a/c.....mainly as a "backup" (for me). We'll see. What I really need to do now is to research the best ways to bulk transfer data from one a/c to another, so.....yeah.

(*shrug...*)

Mike. ;)

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Re: Paid cloud storage.....what are your opinions, guys?

Post by p310don »

I pay to get 100gig of google storage. It's pretty good, also used for work and photos and stuff. I'm half full.

I have been thinking lately about bit torrent as a protocol for sharing files / repositories. With servers going down (archive.org) and DDoSes etc, a decentralised system for sharing files would be ideal. For a while a decade or so ago, I was diligently creating torrents for Puppies, but life got in the way of that, and it wasn't necessary.

Is it possible to have a BT based repository?

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Re: Paid cloud storage.....what are your opinions, guys?

Post by mikewalsh »

@rockedge :-

rockedge wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2024 3:38 pm

It's exhausting to keep track of the different places where the stuff is.

Juggling gig's is a drag in spirit and bandwidth....upload......download Daniel Son......(cheap Karate Kid movie reference :shock: )

Ah, TELL me about it, Erik. I've got SO much stuff squirrelled away - and much of it has been there years - that I often have to "do the rounds" to remind myself where things are. Which is why some time ago I set up each a/c's 'home page' as a Chrome web-app (launches in its own window, like a 'desktop client'.....the way I detailed for NetFlix several years ago, on the old forum), along with a YAD-powered 'launcher' GUI so's I can just bring 'em up, one after another, all at the same time.

Saves having to hunt through all the bookmarks to find them whenever I want to access something.....especially given that not all of them offer a dedicated desktop client anyway. Makes life a bit easier for me. :)

Mike. ;)

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Re: Paid cloud storage.....what are your opinions, guys?

Post by wizard »

@mikewalsh
@p310don

Assuming you are keeping local archives, then almost all of your cloud storage services have an automatic sync feature. I use Dropbox for personal stuff, but don't use their automatic sync and instead use rclone to selectively sync files from different locations on the LAN. Could probably use DB's sync, just haven't worked out the logic.

Local storage is cheap, so it insures against losing your files because the Cloud storage failed.

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Re: Paid cloud storage.....what are your opinions, guys?

Post by p310don »

@wizard for me, cloud does two things. Mostly it is a sharing / collaboration medium, easiest to share cloud based stuff with others. Then it is a backup system, backing up stuff that is already physically backed up.

For work, I run a routine every 24 hours that backs up the day's efforts (about a gig of data) to 3 different local computers, a removable drive AND my google drive. Cloud is great, but don't trust it 100%

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Re: Paid cloud storage.....what are your opinions, guys?

Post by rockedge »

wiak wrote: Fri Oct 18, 2024 12:58 am

Did you find a new home for all the stuff you stored, Erik? If so, where is it?

The xbps packages are here -> https://mega.nz/folder/Dh4h2LIY#HY8sp8cfDVzOKwwR4GAi-Q

The kernels are still wandering but I have also decided to reduce the overall size of the kernels so withdrawing most of the older RT versions.
Also the ISO's that count are still here: https://rockedge.org/kernels/

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Re: Paid cloud storage.....what are your opinions, guys?

Post by Clarity »

Hi @mikewalsh

Been a Google Drive (currently 115GB) user for several years and reasons similar to you. I actually have a few more reasons than you provide, yet its one of best solutions, for me, as they will be around for years to come.

They are both stable and as fast as IBM which, not known by most, is the fastest deliverer of ALL internet DNS and speeds in the world.

Keep up the good work. I applaud your housekeeping efforts in your delivery to this community.

Thanks :!:

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Re: Paid cloud storage.....what are your opinions, guys?

Post by spiritwild »

never had a pay account. I use mega for files, google drive,etc

I use terabox on my phone to keep photos.
They have a pretty good linux app to manage files

Download TeraBox for PC
Free Cloud Storage up to 1TB (1024GB)
Download Videos, Files and Send Large Files Free

https://www.terabox.com/terabox-cloud-s ... e-download

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