Originally Posted by
Mousie
wow, just reading over this, and not being a computer geek, I have tons, TONS of stuff on flash drives.
This upsets me, thinking I could put one in one day and get NOTHING! 
I'll have to beg my dd to help
me figure out how to put my stuff on CD's, DVD's,...I can't buy an extra hard drive and I agree, if your
computer goes down, what good is Cloud if you can't access it? I thought all I had to do was make sure
I didn't lose any of my fl drives. Thank God for pinterest at least. ~sigh~
I don't think you need to be so concerned. I also question the information in the original post about Cds and DVDs lasting longer than flash drives. It seems that flash drives actually retain data longer. According to the link below, CDs/DVDs have a life of about 5 years, whereas flash drives can last 10 years. Again, according to this website, what affects flash drives most is the number of write cycles.
https://www.storagecraft.com/blog/da...rage-lifespan/
It's best to have multiple backups. In other words, if you like to back up once a month, you could use 4 flash drives. Use #1 the first month, #2 the second month, #3 the third month, #4 the fourth month, and then recycle #1 for the fifth month. That way if your most recent backup is bad for some reason, you have three earlier backups to fall back on. For safety reasons, you could also replace all of your flash drives every 8 years or so.
It's best to have backups both on-site and off-site. Cloud storage makes the off-site version easy. The thing about cloud storage is that you can retrieve it from ***any*** computer. If your computer dies and you purchase a new computer, you use your login and password to download your backup that is in the cloud into your new computer. Much like restoring from a flash drive or CD/DVD. Cloud storage is especially valuable if, for example, your house burns down; any on-site storage will have burned with the house, but the cloud data is safely off-site.