lwbuchholz

I wouldn't feel secure with the cloud because that is just saving to the internet and if your computer goes down or you loose the internet you have lost your information. I use a back up external drive and when I get enough I burn them to DVDs and burn 2 copies of each. My techie son told me that thumb drives last longer than Cd's anymore. So I have a tendency to save to as many things as I can. I bought an external DVD Drive too. I made a photo album with pockets for the Cd's and put thumbnail pictures of what in on the CD so I have a record to look through and not have to go through all Cd's to find what I want. Just my paranoia kicking in.
Lynda

themachinelady

The cds you can add to or rewrite over are the rewriteable cds and will have a rw on them. The others with just the r are the ones you can not rewrite over but if you set them up correctly when starting to write on them, they can be added to.

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~

cathyvv

It's a "magical" disc with space assigned to your account with Google, or with Apple, for instance. You can save important info, pictures, etc. on it. It is supposed to be secure, and probably is as secure from hacking as any device is these days. You can put things in the 'cloud' and take them out, share them with friends or not, and so on.

So from our user perspective, it is like a USB drive or CD, but it's more accessible to you from any device you have, and you don't have to worry about it being lost, broken or stolen by someone who is not you.

I just got an Apple phone, so am learning some of this stuff for the first time. Google is similar. It appears that with both Google and Apple clouds, the stuff you put in the clouds is available to you on other google devices if you are using Google cloud, or, if you have Apple, other Apple devices you use. I haven't seen how to get something from the Google cloud to the Apple Cloud, but there probably is an app for that...

That exhausts my knowledge as of today!

cathyvv

If your computer dies or the internet goes down, the cloud will still be there with your data. What you lose with your computer device/internet down is a way to access the cloud and see the data. The solution is to fix or replace your device (phone, pad, pc, etc.), and thereby get access again using your id and password.

Unless we are in a disaster situation, as Puerto Rico is, the internet usually comes back to life reasonably fast.

It's also good to have all the cds with backup, but even with that, if your pc goes down, you lose access to the CDs until you replace the pc. Consider that if your home is in a fire or ravaged through some natural disaster, your CDs could all be lost. In the cloud, they would still be available to you via a computer or other device.

cathyvv

You can access the cloud from any computer/phone, etc. if your personal device or devices go down as long as you know your ids and passwords. The solution is to do what you probably would do anyway: replace the device, then log into your accounts and get access to the cloud.

When I say 'any' device, what I really mean is any "cloud" compatible device, for instance 'android' phones or tablets could access Google cloud, apple devices could access apple cloud.

What I don't know is whether there is an easy way to transfer data from an apple cloud to a google cloud. I'm just getting up to speed on this cloud stuff... I'm reasonably sure Microsoft and other computer/software vendors have their own versions of the "cloud" out there, too.

Tothill

If you save data to 'The Cloud' you can access it from anywhere. If your computer dies, you will not be able to access a USB drive, or data on a CD.

There are many 'cloud' services, many come with 'free' storage and you can purchase extra as needed. Google Drive, One Drive (comes with MS Office), iCloud (comes with Apple account) are three that I use.

Another option that I used prior to 'cloud' was to email files to my gmail account. I get 15 GB of storage.

It is important to think about how you will access the data you have stored. Is it a long term back up? Do you need to access it from other locations? Do you need to move the files between devices (computer to LA, phone to computer etc).

Then there is the issue of local and off site storage. CDs, USB, external hard drive etc, are all examples of local storage. You have a back up, but it is not safe from a disaster. There were photos here recently of a LAQ who had lost everything in a fire. A devastating experience, for her and her family. Cloud storage is off site, but not without risks. Cloud sites could be hacked, they can go 'down', they could have a catastrophic incident.

Me, I use One Drive and have a mirrored copy of my One Drive on my computer. I use Google Drive to share files between various groups I belong too (not copy written material.) I save all my photos to iCloud.

kittiebug

I went on ebay and got external drive for $20.00 dollars , works great .( buy new)

romanojg

Not all zip drives are the same. I have one of the first ones that came out in 2001, I still use it with no problems. I do think you should have a few different places that things are backed up too. When it comes to zip drives and designs, some require more unused space to run successfully than others, plus some don't like being put on a large zip, I've heard of 2 to 4g being the largest they like but I've used way larger ones on mine. Alot depends on your computer too.
Rennie: it depends on how you "burned" your cd, you can chose to burn them where you can add to it like a zip drive or burn them and the cd is closed where nothing can be added or deleted from it.

Prism99

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.