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I don't disagree with the premise, but the author's case is deeply flawed. > Instead of paying a monthly subscription to store and access your files, a one-tim

I don't disagree with the premise, but the author's case is deeply flawed. > Instead of paying a monthly subscription to store and access your files, a one-time payment for an external hard drive may be a more economical alternative over time. Cloud storage has much, much more redundancy than a single external hard drive, and the author discounts the value of that redundancy. > Reliable access Have fun getting grandma to cycle her drives when the drives inevitably fail! Also, have fun setting up networked access over the Internet, without resorting to a drive provider's portal (misses the point of getting off the cloud), dealing with the sorry state of static IP addresses for residential connections, helping grandma set up a domain and DNS, hoping nobody attacks your exposed network, etc. Non-starter.

justinclift 3y ago
Unfortunately, cloud storage really does have reliability issues. A recent case in point, though there are many more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2023/11/29/google-issues-warning-to-drive-users-over-sudden-deletion-of-files/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2023/11/29/google-i...
- southernplaces7 3y ago
  So in other words, Google in particular has a reliability issue (big news flash there). Unless you're nitpicking for its own sake, you presumably know there are many other cloud options out there for which you can even use your own encryption system (think boxxryptor, cryptomator, reclone, etc) for maximum privacy. It's neither expensive or hard to run simultaneous, fairly simple multiple cloud backups of one's device data with different providers that each have better customer service reputations than google.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    > It's neither expensive or hard to run simultaneous, fairly simple multiple cloud backups ... Yep, that would potentially be a suitable workaround. Not sure I'd really agree with the pricing aspect not being expensive, but that's probably one of those things that depends on each users circumstances.

justinclift 3y ago

Unfortunately, cloud storage really does have reliability issues. A recent case in point, though there are many more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2023/11/29/google-issues-warning-to-drive-users-over-sudden-deletion-of-files/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2023/11/29/google-i...

southernplaces7 3y ago
So in other words, Google in particular has a reliability issue (big news flash there). Unless you're nitpicking for its own sake, you presumably know there are many other cloud options out there for which you can even use your own encryption system (think boxxryptor, cryptomator, reclone, etc) for maximum privacy. It's neither expensive or hard to run simultaneous, fairly simple multiple cloud backups of one's device data with different providers that each have better customer service reputations than google.
- justinclift 3y ago
  > It's neither expensive or hard to run simultaneous, fairly simple multiple cloud backups ... Yep, that would potentially be a suitable workaround. Not sure I'd really agree with the pricing aspect not being expensive, but that's probably one of those things that depends on each users circumstances.