Cloud Storage (help?)

[GaryG45]

Re: Cloud Storage (help?)

Paul,
If you think you may be adding music or updating metadata in your music collection, you may want to look at cloud backup instead of cloud storage. I'm using CrashPlan for Home for my 125GB photo library, and I'll switch to BackBlaze next year because CrashPlan is discontinuing the Home plan and going to a Small Business plan, which costs $10 a month. What I liked about CrashPlan is that they provided unlimited storage and don't delete versions of files. The primary version of my photo library is on an external hard drive that is backed up to another external hard drive, so I have two local copies and an offsite copy. I've begun to test BackBlaze Backup on another PC where I just backup the PC. The only thing I don't like about BackBlaze is that they only keep old versions of files for 30 days then delete them. I have done various restore tests, and my restored photos are the same size, have the same metadata, and look like the originals. I plan to start backing up a test library of my music(FLAC) using BackBlaze later this month. If you are still interested in having a remote copy of your music in the cloud, I'd investigate BackBlaze and CrashPlan.

Gary

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Cloud Storage (help?)

Paul,
If you think you may be adding music or updating metadata in your music collection, you may want to look at cloud backup instead of cloud storage. I'm using CrashPlan for Home for my 125GB photo library, and I'll switch to BackBlaze next year because CrashPlan is discontinuing the Home plan and going to a Small Business plan, which costs $10 a month. What I liked about CrashPlan is that they provided unlimited storage and don't delete versions of files. The primary version of my photo library is on an external hard drive that is backed up to another external hard drive, so I have two local copies and an offsite copy. I've begun to test BackBlaze Backup on another PC where I just backup the PC. The only thing I don't like about BackBlaze is that they only keep old versions of files for 30 days then delete them. I have done various restore tests, and my restored photos are the same size, have the same metadata, and look like the originals. I plan to start backing up a test library of my music(FLAC) using BackBlaze later this month. If you are still interested in having a remote copy of your music in the cloud, I'd investigate BackBlaze and CrashPlan.

Gary

Hi Gary,

I will have another read and reply over the weekend.

Cheers,

Paul

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: Cloud Storage (help?)

Hi Gary,

Thanks for the tip.

I had a look at your kind suggestions. As you mentioned, I see that CrashPlan is currently sunsetting its Home Plan customers.

But, being quite a late-in-life taker of computers!, I don't understand the difference between 'back-up' and 'storage', please?

Cheers,

Paul

[GaryG45]

Re: Cloud Storage (help?)

Paul,
A backup is making a duplicate copy of files on your computer or files on an external hard drive to be used in case the primary files get corrupted or the hard drive goes bad, so you can use the backup copy to restore your files. A cloud backup does the backup to the cloud instead of to a local hard drive. The backup service provider provides a backup app that you configure. You are the only person who can access your backed up data.
Cloud Storage can be thought of as storage provided by the storage provider. The storage can be used to free up space on your hard drive by moving files to the cloud storage, it can be used to share data, and it can be used for your backups. For some storage providers you have to use specific apps to move your data/files to their storage, and some provide the apps. As you learned with Amazon, you have to read the fine print to insure that they don't compress or manipulate your files. I believe Google does the same thing with Google Photos.

Because cloud storage can also be used for backups it can get confusing to determine the differences. Here is a link to a BackBlaze article that may explain it better than me.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/sync-vs-backup-vs-storage/

I hope this helps.

Gary

[GaryG45]

Re: Cloud Storage (help?)

Paul,
It appears my update from a couple of days ago didn't make it. I've sent you a PM, and I'll try the update again.

Cloud storage is thought of as an extension to regular computer storage. If your hard drive is getting full you can move low used folders and files to cloud storage to free hard drive space. It can also be used for your computer backups, and it can be used to share folders and files with other people. Cloud backup is performing backups of active data from your computer and/or external hard drives with the intent to use the backups for restores when your hard drive or external hard drive fails. For cloud backups you usually have to use the cloud service providers backup app, and for cloud storage the cloud service provides names of apps to use to access their cloud storage. There are some other differences as you found with Amazon's cloud storage.

Here is a link to a BackBlaze article that provides their definition of cloud storage and backups. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/sync-...up-vs-storage/

Gary

[GaryG45]

Re: Cloud Storage (help?)

Paul,
Today I performed restore tests of a track from an album and an entire album from BackBlaze Backup. The original sizes matched the restore sizes, and the metadata I reviewed matched. I also performed a file comparison of the original vs backup of the single track and each track from the album. All matched. These were FLAC files and a folder.jpg for the album. I would expect ALAC and mp3 files to have the same result. My main interest was the FLAC files because my master music library is FLAC, and if I have the FLAC files, I should be able to create ALAC or mp3 files. Hope this helps.

Gary