Your cloud backup experiences - good or bad

[sybersitizen]

My household has two computers and NAS. The computers and NAS are periodically backed up to portable drives that are kept both onsite and elsewhere. I'm thinking I should add automated cloud backup now, but I want to choose a good path for doing so.

I want a service that will work with both computers using one account, and that can also do backup and restore directly on the NAS, which is mapped as a drive letter. 5TB total storage should be sufficient.

IDrive meets these requirements and is at the top of my list right now, but I wonder if anyone has personal experience with it or any other product that I should consider.

[Jingo]

Currently using a scheme with Cryptomator and Google Drive for cloud backup of my processed photos... clean, fast and safe with encryption (whichever method you decide upon - I highly recommend local encryption before upload).

[Mario]

Yup. General rule: Never upload anything to cloud storage you have not encrypted locally before.

I think if they get a chance to train their AIs on our data, they will. They have 100+ page TOS in best lawyer language for a reason. In the US and many other countries, cloud vendors are also required by law to scan your content and images for potential CSAM content and what else - who knows, these days?

If you use a backup lie TrueImage or Macrium Reflect, your backups can be encrypted automatically, and when the backup target is your cloud drive, you're good. Automatic encryption, versioning, retention scheduling all taken care of.

Cryptomator is an excellent software from Germany, like so many awesome products  
It basically "simulates" a drive on your computer, and everything you store on that drive is encrypted. Behind the curtain, Cryptomator stores everything you store on the simulated drive in form of encrypted files in a folder you select. If you create the storage folder e.g. in your OneDrive or GoogleDrive folder, the data is automatically synched into the cloud. 

I use this to maintain several git repositories and access them on all my computers. The git repositories are stored to the encrypted Cryptomator drive, and OneDrive takes care for synching.

I have an Office 365 Family subscription (5 seats), wich gives me full Office and also 5 TB (!) storage (one TB for each user I connect to my license). I'm currently using a bit over 3 TB, split between 3 user accounts. The Office license did cost 80€ but may be more expensive now. Google drive costs 120US$ per year for 2TB.

[sybersitizen]

Thanks for the comments so far. IDrive has an option for private key (zero knowledge) encryption. With that enabled, neither that company nor any other entity would be able to decode any stored files for viewing or analysis. Only I would.

I have an Office 365 Family subscription (5 seats), wich gives me full Office and also 5 TB (!) storage (one TB for each user I connect to my license). I'm currently using a bit over 3 TB, split between 3 user accounts. The Office license did cost 80€ but may be more expensive now. Google drive costs 120US$ per year for 2TB.

I have the same subscription, shared with one person. So the full 5TB can be accessed by a single user? Or do I need to 'create' more users to access it?

[PandDLong]

I have the same subscription, shared with one person. So the full 5TB can be accessed by a single user? Or do I need to 'create' more users to access it?

I have it as well and I believe you need to 'create' more users as it is 1 TB per user.   I did this and split my usage across two 'users'.

Michael

[Mario]

One TB per user.

[sybersitizen]

I guess the 365 approach can save some money (depending on the cost of the backup software), but splitting the data into <1TB chunks to be uploaded under different accounts seems pretty awkward.

I was thinking others here might have used a comprehensive cloud backup service like IDrive, Carbonite, or Backblaze, all of which offer private key encryption and local backup capability as well.

[Mario]

I need Office anyway, so I get my cloud space "for free" and I don't want to waste it.

This of course all depends on your requirements.
For my daily backup volume, 1TB goes a long way (weeks).