4 ms·

I use a Mac. I noticed that actual files on my laptops are less and less every year: I use iCloud Photos for my ~50GB of photos, and they are downloaded only w

I use a Mac. I noticed that actual files on my laptops are less and less every year: I use iCloud Photos for my ~50GB of photos, and they are downloaded only when you try to open them. I have documents and desktop files on iCloud (get downloaded on demand as well), and I use Google Photos as an Apple Photos backup. All of my more recent projects are on GitHub. I guess I only keep non-vital files on my laptop. Having said that, I have an old 1TB Time Capsule at home (where I work from), and let macOS do its incremental backups automatically every hour. In addition, I usually launch a manual backup whenever I make some big or important change. I transfer my data from the most recent backup whenever I buy a new laptop and I'm usually ready to go in a hour or so, they work wonderfully.

icebraining 10y ago
So you're just an account glitch away from being locked out of a bunch of your documents and/or code? To me, backing up means being isolated from failures by a single point - be that a drive or a whole company. One of the reasons I often avoid cloud services is because they're hard to backup.
- nkkollaw 10y ago
  No, the worse that could happen is if I got locked out of my iCloud account. I would lose some files in ~/Documents/ and ~/Desktop/ (a lot of stuff I copied on an external hard drive before uploading to iCloud), which I don't really need. Everything else is backed up automatically hourly, and all my work is in on GitHub.
ValentineC 10y ago
> I use iCloud Photos for my ~50GB of photos, and they are downloaded only when you try to open them. I have documents and desktop files on iCloud (get downloaded on demand as well), and I use Google Photos as an Apple Photos backup. Are all your photos "backed up" on Google Photos via the iOS app? What happens if iCloud fails, or if you get locked out of your account?
- nkkollaw 10y ago
  I don't think the iOS app can backup to Google Photos, but in any case, no. All my photos are on both iCloud, and Google Photos. That's every single picture, including the ones I snap now that get automatically synced on both iCloud Photos and Google Photos.
  - ValentineC 10y ago
    There's an option to do so in the Google Photos app [1]. Amazon Photos and Flickr offer a similar feature as well. Now I'm curious — how are you getting your photos into Google Photos if the files are mainly stored in the iCloud Photo Library? [1] https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6193313?co=GENIE.Platform%3DiOS&hl=en https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6193313?co=GENIE.Pl...
    - nkkollaw 10y ago
      That's what I do. You said the other way around. I don't sync Google Photos via iCloud, but I do sync iCloud via Google Photos.

icebraining 10y ago

So you're just an account glitch away from being locked out of a bunch of your documents and/or code? To me, backing up means being isolated from failures by a single point - be that a drive or a whole company. One of the reasons I often avoid cloud services is because they're hard to backup.

nkkollaw 10y ago
No, the worse that could happen is if I got locked out of my iCloud account. I would lose some files in ~/Documents/ and ~/Desktop/ (a lot of stuff I copied on an external hard drive before uploading to iCloud), which I don't really need. Everything else is backed up automatically hourly, and all my work is in on GitHub.

ValentineC 10y ago

> I use iCloud Photos for my ~50GB of photos, and they are downloaded only when you try to open them. I have documents and desktop files on iCloud (get downloaded on demand as well), and I use Google Photos as an Apple Photos backup. Are all your photos "backed up" on Google Photos via the iOS app? What happens if iCloud fails, or if you get locked out of your account?

nkkollaw 10y ago
I don't think the iOS app can backup to Google Photos, but in any case, no. All my photos are on both iCloud, and Google Photos. That's every single picture, including the ones I snap now that get automatically synced on both iCloud Photos and Google Photos.
- ValentineC 10y ago
  There's an option to do so in the Google Photos app [1]. Amazon Photos and Flickr offer a similar feature as well. Now I'm curious — how are you getting your photos into Google Photos if the files are mainly stored in the iCloud Photo Library? [1] https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6193313?co=GENIE.Platform%3DiOS&hl=en https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6193313?co=GENIE.Pl...
  - nkkollaw 10y ago
    That's what I do. You said the other way around. I don't sync Google Photos via iCloud, but I do sync iCloud via Google Photos.