Comments on: I don’t trust the cloud http://popcorn.cx/blog/2009/08/i-dont-trust-the-cloud/ The personal blog of Stephen Edmonds where he rambles on about computers, photography, cycling and other random things Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:20:38 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: Stephen http://popcorn.cx/blog/2009/08/i-dont-trust-the-cloud/#comment-53265 Stephen Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:48:06 +0000 http://popcorn.cx/blog/?p=923#comment-53265 <p>At the moment I am changing how I backup my data, and it will probably be the topic of a later post.</p> <p>But my current setup is that I have my data synced to another computer, photos from Windows desktop to Linux server, mail and documents from Linux server to Mac laptop, etc. That last one used to be an off-site backup, but I stopped taking my PowerBook to work quite some time ago.</p> <p>Every six months or so I make a complete backup to a hard drive that I take to work. On the same day as writing the above post I bought two external 2.5" 320GB drives (on special) to swap between home and work on a much shorter interval, 2-3 weeks.</p> <p>One other issue I had with using Google for mail was the latency. Compared to my local IMAP server, IMAP to Google was agonisingly slow, from home, from work and from my phone. That said, I am using now using Google for contacts and calendar instead of Address Book and iCal on my Mac. Personal preference really.</p> At the moment I am changing how I backup my data, and it will probably be the topic of a later post.

But my current setup is that I have my data synced to another computer, photos from Windows desktop to Linux server, mail and documents from Linux server to Mac laptop, etc. That last one used to be an off-site backup, but I stopped taking my PowerBook to work quite some time ago.

Every six months or so I make a complete backup to a hard drive that I take to work. On the same day as writing the above post I bought two external 2.5″ 320GB drives (on special) to swap between home and work on a much shorter interval, 2-3 weeks.

One other issue I had with using Google for mail was the latency. Compared to my local IMAP server, IMAP to Google was agonisingly slow, from home, from work and from my phone. That said, I am using now using Google for contacts and calendar instead of Address Book and iCal on my Mac. Personal preference really.

]]> By: Wes http://popcorn.cx/blog/2009/08/i-dont-trust-the-cloud/#comment-53264 Wes Sun, 16 Aug 2009 00:48:28 +0000 http://popcorn.cx/blog/?p=923#comment-53264 <p>I use web based services pretty heavily. Gmail being the most significant. I've been using Gmail since 2004 and have amassed over 75,000 emails. I like Gmail because I can just keep all my email in it and have access from anywhere. Also the search is pretty good. More than occasionally I will dig up old emails from a few years ago.</p> <p>Instead of running my own mail service to ensure I have a backup I periodically run <a href="" rel="nofollow">getmail</a> to download all mail from Google since the last time it was run. I don't place any significance on what I have in Flickr, I don't upload full size images anyway and have all the originals in Aperture.</p> <p>What do you use for backup of all you local data? In other words if a fire took out your house would you still have everything? By having my email in Gmail I automatically have an off-site backup. In addition to that I have a Time Machine drive that contains a live copy of my Mac. Additionally I have an Aperture vault on an external drive and my entire machine is backed up up to the "cloud" via <a href="https://www.backblaze.com/" rel="nofollow">Backblaze</a>. Photos get the biggest backup treatment in my scheme as they are irreplaceable. Stuff like email is pretty redundant too as its on Google servers, local machine, Time Machine and Backblaze.</p> <p>I don't think there's much problem using web based services as long as you choose your services carefully and are aware of what you're putting in there and how hard it is to get out.</p> I use web based services pretty heavily. Gmail being the most significant. I’ve been using Gmail since 2004 and have amassed over 75,000 emails. I like Gmail because I can just keep all my email in it and have access from anywhere. Also the search is pretty good. More than occasionally I will dig up old emails from a few years ago.

Instead of running my own mail service to ensure I have a backup I periodically run getmail to download all mail from Google since the last time it was run. I don’t place any significance on what I have in Flickr, I don’t upload full size images anyway and have all the originals in Aperture.

What do you use for backup of all you local data? In other words if a fire took out your house would you still have everything? By having my email in Gmail I automatically have an off-site backup. In addition to that I have a Time Machine drive that contains a live copy of my Mac. Additionally I have an Aperture vault on an external drive and my entire machine is backed up up to the “cloud” via Backblaze. Photos get the biggest backup treatment in my scheme as they are irreplaceable. Stuff like email is pretty redundant too as its on Google servers, local machine, Time Machine and Backblaze.

I don’t think there’s much problem using web based services as long as you choose your services carefully and are aware of what you’re putting in there and how hard it is to get out.

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