Over the last year or so, there have been numerous schemes afoot to provide users with various amounts of cloud backup. The price for this service varies from free to $10 a month (or $120 a year). There are some enterprise offerings that cost even more.
The problem with all these schemes is that they come nowhere near close enough to actually backing up anything by today's standards. My photo collection, for example, is hovering around 500GB and expanding faster and faster as newer cameras can chew up lots of megabytes and RAW photos are added to the equation.
So, one of the most important things I have to backup, personal photos, is already out of the range offered as backup. Comcast, for example, offered the following backup plan: 2GB of cloud storage for free, 50GB for $4.95/month (just under $60 a year), or 200GB for about $120/year.
I recently bought a 3TB USB 3.0 external hard disk for $120, and golly, it's all paid up for the life of the device. I won't be paying $9.99/month for the rest of my life.
Newer, less idiotic schemes such as Microsoft's SkyDrive give you 25GB of cloud storage for free. This might be good for documents and other non-photographic backups, but once you begin to go higher, the costs skyrocket compared to the external hard disk.
Of course, the external hard disk doesn't have professional management. What happens if you drop it or accidentally erase it? I always ask people what happens when you do not pay your cloud bill and a month later your account is deleted. I'd rather take responsibility myself. Hard disks are always a better solution than the cloud. They are cheaper, faster, more secure, and offer much more capacity.
What if you have to restore, like I had to recently? I'm always worried sick when something like this happens. I have used the Memeo continuous backup package that comes with the Seagate drives. I wait for the restore "gotcha" that can occur. But no, the restore went perfectly well and my system was completely back to where it was, thanks to the Memeo software and a terabyte drive.
I've chatted about this before. The best thing about cloud backup is the fact that it is off-site. Most people backup their home or small office machines and keep the backup files or drives on premises. This assumes that the reason for the backup is in case of a catastrophic hardware failure. But what if there is a fire and the building is razed? The backups are also burnt to a crisp.
Thus, I move a copy of the backup to the trunk of my car or to someone else's house. It's a rinky-dink tactic, but highly effective nonetheless.
Now, this could all be alleviated if a company like Google offered 1TB of cloud backup for free. You could pay more for larger amounts of storage. 1TB should be the baseline, not 2GB. I might even be tempted to buy 1TB of cloud storage for a $50 one-time flat fee with perhaps a transaction charge for the moments when I access the storage.
Until something like that comes along, I'll be transacting from the trunk of the car.
You can Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter @therealdvorak.
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