Data storage and backup in the cloud. Tips?

[oftpiste]

not exactly photo or video but....

Getting ready to upgrade computers and am trying to update my digital life as well.

In addition to two local external drive backups I'd like to have a cloud option too. Problem seems to be that the providers of automated cloud backup systems that I've been able to find don't allow pure storage of data, only backups. I would like to have both.

Anyone have any experience or wisdom to share?

[Fenris]

It's probably better just to keep the two separate, or if you really want them in the same location use something like Amazon's S3 service and computer side apps to manage backup.

[oftpiste]

I went through the trial period with Backblaze. It did everything as promised and was pretty easy to get along with, but you can't access it as you would an external drive with a folder type system, nor can you store applications.

[Fenris]

If you want to backup applications with Backblaze, you can make a disk image (or a couple) with them in there, make sure you remove dmg from the 'don't back up' item list and bump to the maximum allowed backup size and it will get them, but no it doesn't backup applications in place.

For having all the applications and your system backed up use something like Superduper and Carbon Copy Cloner to make an exact backup onto the same sized bare drive or two every couple of months and store elsewhere.

My system right now is: Old 500 GB internals with cloned systems at different ages, Time Machine for when ever I plug it in, and Backblaze for real time-ish backups and backing up the random extra bulk storage that doesn't make it onto the Time Machine disk. Of course Backblaze isn't really real time when it's trying to get caught up on 80 Gigs of new data at a time....

[bobrmr]

I have all my photo's and video's on an external drive and replicate that to another external drive on a server in my house. it works, it's cheap, but it's not without flaws.

I have been using Google Drive for a lot of other data replication for files that i access frequently from multiple PC's and phones, etc. And I gotta say, I'm very pleased. 5gig free and it just mounts as a folder anywhere you want. Auto sync's to all devices when the file is saved. I have been thinking about upping my storage to 200gig for $10/month. I could copy most of my pictures, data, and music and have true redundancy in the "cloud". Dropbox is similar, Carbonite as well. All seem around the same price.