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Ask HN: Google Drive vs iCloud – which is best for personal files/photos/videos?

I'm moving ~20 years of my personal photos, videos, and files from external hard disks to a cloud. Motivation: a damaged/lost/stolen SSD could lose my precious memories forever. I'm an iPhone/mac user (no iCloud for photo/videos, just contacts and a few very small things that makes moving to a new iPhone easier). But I also use Google Drive a lot. I'm from a country with terribly slow upload speeds, and I've got 10 days in a country with high upload speeds, so I'll try to make a decision soon. For a fairly important decision, I find surprisingly little useful comparisons online. The most useful has been a youtube comment [1]: > The biggest difference is that iCloud is a sync service, whereas Drive is a backup and sync service. Being able to store things and delete them from your device while still having the option to sync specific folders across devices makes Drive superior to both iCloud and OneDrive. This makes me lean toward google drive. Your thoughts one this are greatly appreciated. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=794VnvYuJ5c

brudgers 2y ago
Motivation: a damaged/lost/stolen SSD could lose my precious memories forever. Sure a declined/canceled/expired credit card might be less likely. But I wouldn’t bet on it over a few years. Much less several decades. Good luck.
- burnieflanders 2y ago
  I'll pay annually to reduce this risk. For some reason I doubt google would just delete my data if I went into a coma for a year or two, but I can't back that up with a source. It's just a hope. I'd consider paying 10 years in advance if I could tbh.
  - brudgers 2y ago
    Google also cancels products and companies change terms and conditions. Suppose you get issued a replacement credit card number and forget to update all your online accounts? The cloud provides convenience, but it does not care about your photos as much as you do. The best way to preserve pictures is printing them out and putting the prints in a box. It has a track record. CD-R is the best digital format for archiving.
    - warrenm 2y ago
      >The best way to preserve pictures is printing them out and putting the prints in a box. It has a track record. Now you move to image degradation, risk of loss to fire, water, etc
      - brudgers 2y ago
        In my adult life. I’ve had one flooded house and one burglary. Neither affected my printed photos. The thieves took my computers and tools. My pictures weren’t stored under water pipes…they have never been stored in the kitchen where fire is most likely either. On the other hand I’ve had many dozens of declined/replaced/expired credit cards. Some have glitched online transactions. I have also been laid up sick and recovered from surgery. Eventually I will die. Maybe my online accounts will be continuously maintained. Maybe not. The shoebox of pictures will still be there in the closet even if I stopped thinking about it many years before. And it will be easy for someone to know what it is. A bill for $10/month is the kind of thing executors get rid of. The cloud is great for access. But it is fragile. In the end it’s all Geocities, just at scale.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        warrenm 2y ago
        >The shoebox of pictures will still be there in the closet even if I stopped thinking about it many years before. And it will be easy for someone to know what it is. A bill for $10/month is the kind of thing executors get rid of. Random shoe boxes of thousands of photos will get chucked by the executors - no one has time to go through them No one cares So ... if you're only worried about them maybe surviving your passing, don't worry: they're all going to the great dustbin in the sky (or in the front yard)
        brudgers 2y ago
        My spouse or child are the my most likely executors. Maybe they keep the box, maybe they don't. If they keep it, it can just go back in the closet. Nothing critical has to happen next month and every month thereafter. There's no financial tradeoff to be considered. No need to doom scroll at a computer. And if there is something that speaks to them, they can hang it on the wall. If you don't print, you don't really care that much about the pictures anyway. There's nothing wrong with that, making pictures is fun.
flaburgan 2y ago
Hello, the question may sound out of topic but have you considered open source solution such as Nextcloud? Personally I found privacy very important and that's what I picked. It was clearly not at the same level than Google drive at the beginning but it improved a lot those past years and is now very good in my opinion.
- warrenm 2y ago
  Nextcloud is great I run an instance But you're still paying for the space (and, if you're like me, also the server infrastructure to run it (and spending time keeping it up-to-date, etc))
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- freetinker 2y ago
  iCloud seems peerless from a privacy standpoint. I haven’t seen this mentioned much on HN (perhaps because it’s relatively new, an opt-in feature, and not open-source), but iCloud offers E2EE for most of its services. Of course, one has to implicitly trust Apple’s implementation as I don’t believe this is auditable by independent sources. Would love somebody more knowledgeable than me in this topic chiming in!
aosaigh 2y ago
I wouldn’t consider either a backup service. If your primary concern is losing your data, use Backblaze instead, or use Timemachine or a NAS with Carbon Copy Cloner. FWIW I use iCloud, but as a sync service so I can access files on iPad and iPhone.
k310 2y ago
Apple has real support people you can speak to in person.
mapasj 2y ago
Is price a factor? Google Drive and iCloud are more expensive than using raw storage from a Cloud services provider, like AWS or GCP.
- burnieflanders 2y ago
  Price isn't a factor (happy to a few hundred bucks a year for safekeeping of files/memories). The reason I prefer google drive / iCloud is (I think) they have backups so if a truck or a comet hits one of their data centers, my files probably won't be lost. Whereas I don't think that's true of S3. Perhaps someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think with AWS/GCP it's up to the user to manage redundancy.
  - mapasj 2y ago
    With S3, the default is for the data to be replicated across Availability Zones. Each AWS region is comprised of at least three Availability Zones. Each AZ can be thought of as a distinct data center, each one a few kilometers away from each other. So if you store your data in the Northern California region of AWS, it would take a major natural disaster to pose a risk to your data. S3 also offers replication from one region to another (eg Northern California to Northern Virginia). My view is that Google Drive and iCloud will cost significantly more, but that is getting you a nice web interface where you can see your files. And maybe other features like sync’ing. Also, customer support. I like AWS S3 because I trust my data is more secure there and it is much cheaper. I also trust the durability of s3, not sure that Google Drive or iCloud discloses so openly how they replicate data or if they have an SLA like S3. But S3 takes some technical knowledge to understand how to manage things in a cost effective way. And you won’t get help from AWS support unless you pay for a support plan.
    - aborsy 2y ago
      S3 is wicked fast, much faster than iCloud or Dropbox. Also the person you are responding to is obviously wrong. S3 is the most durable of all. iCloud and Dropbox were using S3 at some point.
aynyc 2y ago
My family actually pay for both. So we get two backups of our photos & videos. We did that just in case big tech decides to ban us for some random reason.
leros 2y ago
I love Google Photos but I hate that there isn't a good way to make an easy backup. Your photos used to be a folder in Google Drive that you could sync to a local NAS but that option is gone now.
amerkhalid 2y ago
Always keep local copy that is not writeable by iCloud/Google Drive. I use iCloud and Adobe Lightroom. In LR, I make sure that it keeps full resolution photos on a removable drive. Then I back up that drive to a NAS once week or so. Backup folder on NAS is mounted only during backup.

brudgers 2y ago

Motivation: a damaged/lost/stolen SSD could lose my precious memories forever. Sure a declined/canceled/expired credit card might be less likely. But I wouldn’t bet on it over a few years. Much less several decades. Good luck.

burnieflanders 2y ago
I'll pay annually to reduce this risk. For some reason I doubt google would just delete my data if I went into a coma for a year or two, but I can't back that up with a source. It's just a hope. I'd consider paying 10 years in advance if I could tbh.
- brudgers 2y ago
  Google also cancels products and companies change terms and conditions. Suppose you get issued a replacement credit card number and forget to update all your online accounts? The cloud provides convenience, but it does not care about your photos as much as you do. The best way to preserve pictures is printing them out and putting the prints in a box. It has a track record. CD-R is the best digital format for archiving.
  - warrenm 2y ago
    >The best way to preserve pictures is printing them out and putting the prints in a box. It has a track record. Now you move to image degradation, risk of loss to fire, water, etc
    - brudgers 2y ago
      In my adult life. I’ve had one flooded house and one burglary. Neither affected my printed photos. The thieves took my computers and tools. My pictures weren’t stored under water pipes…they have never been stored in the kitchen where fire is most likely either. On the other hand I’ve had many dozens of declined/replaced/expired credit cards. Some have glitched online transactions. I have also been laid up sick and recovered from surgery. Eventually I will die. Maybe my online accounts will be continuously maintained. Maybe not. The shoebox of pictures will still be there in the closet even if I stopped thinking about it many years before. And it will be easy for someone to know what it is. A bill for $10/month is the kind of thing executors get rid of. The cloud is great for access. But it is fragile. In the end it’s all Geocities, just at scale.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - warrenm 2y ago
        >The shoebox of pictures will still be there in the closet even if I stopped thinking about it many years before. And it will be easy for someone to know what it is. A bill for $10/month is the kind of thing executors get rid of. Random shoe boxes of thousands of photos will get chucked by the executors - no one has time to go through them No one cares So ... if you're only worried about them maybe surviving your passing, don't worry: they're all going to the great dustbin in the sky (or in the front yard)
        brudgers 2y ago
        My spouse or child are the my most likely executors. Maybe they keep the box, maybe they don't. If they keep it, it can just go back in the closet. Nothing critical has to happen next month and every month thereafter. There's no financial tradeoff to be considered. No need to doom scroll at a computer. And if there is something that speaks to them, they can hang it on the wall. If you don't print, you don't really care that much about the pictures anyway. There's nothing wrong with that, making pictures is fun.

flaburgan 2y ago

Hello, the question may sound out of topic but have you considered open source solution such as Nextcloud? Personally I found privacy very important and that's what I picked. It was clearly not at the same level than Google drive at the beginning but it improved a lot those past years and is now very good in my opinion.

warrenm 2y ago
Nextcloud is great I run an instance But you're still paying for the space (and, if you're like me, also the server infrastructure to run it (and spending time keeping it up-to-date, etc))
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
freetinker 2y ago
iCloud seems peerless from a privacy standpoint. I haven’t seen this mentioned much on HN (perhaps because it’s relatively new, an opt-in feature, and not open-source), but iCloud offers E2EE for most of its services. Of course, one has to implicitly trust Apple’s implementation as I don’t believe this is auditable by independent sources. Would love somebody more knowledgeable than me in this topic chiming in!

aosaigh 2y ago

I wouldn’t consider either a backup service. If your primary concern is losing your data, use Backblaze instead, or use Timemachine or a NAS with Carbon Copy Cloner. FWIW I use iCloud, but as a sync service so I can access files on iPad and iPhone.

k310 2y ago

Apple has real support people you can speak to in person.

mapasj 2y ago

Is price a factor? Google Drive and iCloud are more expensive than using raw storage from a Cloud services provider, like AWS or GCP.

burnieflanders 2y ago
Price isn't a factor (happy to a few hundred bucks a year for safekeeping of files/memories). The reason I prefer google drive / iCloud is (I think) they have backups so if a truck or a comet hits one of their data centers, my files probably won't be lost. Whereas I don't think that's true of S3. Perhaps someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think with AWS/GCP it's up to the user to manage redundancy.
- mapasj 2y ago
  With S3, the default is for the data to be replicated across Availability Zones. Each AWS region is comprised of at least three Availability Zones. Each AZ can be thought of as a distinct data center, each one a few kilometers away from each other. So if you store your data in the Northern California region of AWS, it would take a major natural disaster to pose a risk to your data. S3 also offers replication from one region to another (eg Northern California to Northern Virginia). My view is that Google Drive and iCloud will cost significantly more, but that is getting you a nice web interface where you can see your files. And maybe other features like sync’ing. Also, customer support. I like AWS S3 because I trust my data is more secure there and it is much cheaper. I also trust the durability of s3, not sure that Google Drive or iCloud discloses so openly how they replicate data or if they have an SLA like S3. But S3 takes some technical knowledge to understand how to manage things in a cost effective way. And you won’t get help from AWS support unless you pay for a support plan.
  - aborsy 2y ago
    S3 is wicked fast, much faster than iCloud or Dropbox. Also the person you are responding to is obviously wrong. S3 is the most durable of all. iCloud and Dropbox were using S3 at some point.

aynyc 2y ago

My family actually pay for both. So we get two backups of our photos & videos. We did that just in case big tech decides to ban us for some random reason.

leros 2y ago

I love Google Photos but I hate that there isn't a good way to make an easy backup. Your photos used to be a folder in Google Drive that you could sync to a local NAS but that option is gone now.

amerkhalid 2y ago

Always keep local copy that is not writeable by iCloud/Google Drive. I use iCloud and Adobe Lightroom. In LR, I make sure that it keeps full resolution photos on a removable drive. Then I back up that drive to a NAS once week or so. Backup folder on NAS is mounted only during backup.