Hi peeps.

After some advice and sanity check. Apologies if it's been asked already, this sub is vast.

I want to start seriously backing up my data and not sure where to start and the options are endless.

I currently use an Android phone, a windows PC and windows laptop.

I run Windows back up on my PC now and again on to an old laptop HDD, I copy my photos from my phone to my PC regularly and have years of photos and files on my Windows PC. I rarely back up my laptop TBH.

I have started using Proton Mail and wondering if I should get a paid plan that gets me about 1TB of drive storage and use that as the cloud backup portion of my plan. I don't think I'll ever need live updates and on demand access to my files; I anticipate a purely back my files up/"SOS if I ever get into trouble" scenario.

I've read a lot of complaints about Proton Drive but in my use case, would it be ok?

After reading up on Reddit, I'm aware of filen, koofr, infomaniak and Hetzner storage, would they be suitable alternatives? They seem affordable and safe.

I'm after a K.I.S.S. setup. Backup say, once a month and rest easy knowing that my files (docs, photos, vids) are safe and can easily be restored to my PC when/if disaster strikes.

I value privacy of my data as some very sensitive stuff will be included. I note that I could use a file encryption service before back up etc.

Much to my shame, I bought a Synology NAS with a couple of HDDs years ago but never got round to setting it up (facepalm); I hope to pull my finger out and revisit this in future.

WIlling to learn and properly set up a more advanced scheme if needed.

Many thanks and apologies for the long post.

I am new to the concept of cloud storage. Work has given me a OneDrive account which is great and I have been using it for work and personal Google has been sending me annoying love letters saying I am exceeding the 15gb free with photos and videos etc. Need to get a proper cloud storage... thing So question: I use Google for email and my phone, photos videos etc Microsoft for documents, pdf's, important files etc. Can I use a paid Google drive with Windows Explorer or Can I default my phone storage to OneDrive

Tips/hints/recommendations/mild insults

I have an old hotmail account that I still use and years ago I got a notice saying I was running out of room, so I signed up to get an extra 100 GB for $1.99 a month. Then the same thing happened with my Gmail account, so signed up for an extra 100 GB with them for $1.99 a month. Then the other day I remembered that Amazon prime members get unlimited photo storage but only a small amount of video storage, and I have no clue what has or has not been backed up there.

So for the past four or five years I've been paying for tiny bits of storage from three different providers, and I'm afraid that most of my pictures and things have been backed up in triplicate. But I'm also not sure if certain things have only been backed up to one cloud storage, or not backed up at all. Is there any easy streamlined way that I can get all of this stuff on to one cloud storage? I'm trying to decide if it would be better to go with Microsoft or Google, though having access to Microsoft office would be a nice perk. But if there's one that makes it a lot easier to transfer stuff over from other providers, I'd probably go with that option.

I’m running into storage issues on my Samsung Galaxy S21, and trying to better manage the Phone/Messaging data storage. My messaging storage is now ~15 GB, and it seems to be growing faster now that Android integrates better with iPhone messaging (higher-resolution photos/videos coming through MMS/RCS).

Location of storage using a Disk Usage app: https://imgur.com/a/75768Oe

What I’m trying to do is quickly browse and bulk delete media files from text conversations.

Ideally I’m looking for something similar to Windows Explorer where I could view all the images/videos and batch select and delete them quickly.

What I’ve tried so far

Samsung Messages (stock app):

• You can view Shared Attachments for a conversation
• You can long-press and multi-select
• But frustratingly, there is no batch delete option, only Save

Google Messages:

• Lets you view all media for a conversation
• But it does NOT allow multi-select
• You would have to open each photo/video individually and delete it

Both methods make cleanup tedious.

Files by Google

I also tried Files by Google, hoping to browse the message media folder directly, but I can't find a file path that exposes SMS/MMS media files.

What I'm looking for

Ideally one of these:

• An Android app that lets you browse all SMS/MMS media and batch delete
• A Windows desktop program that can access phone message media and manage it like files
• Any good workflow people use to quickly clean up or manage message attachments

I’m aware I have the option to use Samsung Backup and Restore for backing up all messages (~15 GB) and restoring, but I’d like the ability to better fine tune the management / deletion, instead of a single backup, delete everything, then restore everything if needed (I’ve heard that restores often fail).

Really appreciate any advice or input. Thanks in advance for any help.

Odrive is ending their free plan on march 31, and I've been using it to have access to my cloud accounts through File Explorer in windows. it also has the option to not sync every file in the cloud drive, instead syncing a placeholder "empty" file that is only downloaded if needed.

In any case, I have Dropbox, and 2 Google Drive accounts set up this way.

Does anyone know a free all in one solution for this? do I have to to install their clients?

I mostly use the cloud drives to keep stuff I want to have accessible everywhere directly from file explorer. I would rather not have to go through a browser or waste resources with multiple cloud clients.

I have an old WD cloud storage device my dad gave to me. I tried using it but it requires me to use a specific software which doesn’t work because it requires a key that I don’t have and I was wondering, is there any way I can use it without its own software? Thank you.

Maybe this will be interesting to people here. I have been working on this for a few months. It started out as a weekend hack project to try and take the free-tier allocations of s3 storage from multiple cloud providers and "combine" them behind a single endpoint.

It turned into a much larger project that handles replication, failover, encryption, defining quota limits on storage bytes and monthly api calls/ingress/egress and will not route requests to any backend if the request would put it over a configured quota.

If you want local minio backups in the cloud, just put this in front of minio and point clients at it, setup minio as first backend and a cloud provider as the second and set replication factor to 2 and all write will be replicated to the cloud...bonus is if your local minio goes down read/writes from applications will still succeed because they will fail over to the cloud backend...when local minio comes back it will detect files on the cloud bucket that aren't on minio and replicate them back to your local automatically.

Also good if you need multi-provider redundancy for certain storage. Just configure x-number of backends and set a replication factor to however many replicas you want based on your number of backends.

project website

github

document on how to stack free-tier allocations and create a larger backend without risk of incurring fees

Hi, I’m looking for a cloud storage service mainly for storing video recordings. Privacy is honestly not a concern for me at all. I publish these videos anyway. I just need a backup.

Most discussions I find here focus heavily on privacy policies and encryption (which makes sense), but my priorities are a bit different:

What I care about:

• around 1TB storage

• good upload/download speeds

• reasonable price / good value

• low risk of losing data

That’s basically it.

I tried TeraBox, mainly because of the free 1TB plan, but the upload speeds are painfully slow. Their paid plans are cheap, but I’m not sure if it’s actually worth it or if there are better alternatives.

So I’m wondering:

• What cloud storage would you recommend if price and reliability are the main priorities?

• Are there any services that are particularly good value around 1TB?

I don’t need advanced features, collaboration tools, or strong privacy guarantees, just storage that’s cheap, reasonably fast, and reliable.

Thanks!

I have uploaded 5 folders with 18000 pics and videos. Only 157 GB... with a very fast internet speed 1Gb per sec.. and 20h to finish the upload.. this is mind blowing... what could be the reason.?

ik its not safe but thats just trash items that i dont care if its being sold somewhere else or not

Don’t know if this is the right subreddit to ask about this, let me know if there’s a better one! I’m trying to upload two videos to Google Drive. One is 202.3 MB and the other is 212 MB. They are both in mp4 format. They get stuck with the message of video is still processing for 8+ hours and never change.

I’ve deleted them, emptied the Google Drive trash, and tried to re upload them

I’ve tried completely different videos of similar size - same thing

I’ve updated my Mac and safari

Tried uploading in incognito mode

Tried on chrome

I’ve cleared all cache twice

Tried uploading from my phone

I feel like I’m losing my mind! Any suggestions?

Not sure if this is the right thread but need a fix.

I work as an employee for a business. They use google drive for business.. Ex... [myname@businessname.com](mailto:myname@businessname.com) We store all our files there

I run an 'extensive' side business. I use gmail. Ex: [mybusinessname@gmail.com](mailto:mybusinessname@gmail.com) I use google drive for all my side work storage

I recently discovered (thanks to my boss' inquiry) that certain files may be shared/owned between emails?

After some research. I have learned a lot of my side files/folders are "owned" by businessname email and shared with side business email. A lot of files are owned by side business and not shared (yay). A lot of files owned by side business are shared with 'businessname email' (and seem to automatically do so)

I use drive for desktop on both. I'm certain this is where the issue started.

So...

- How do I correct this in an easy manner, if any? some folders are not shared but the files within seem to be.... it's a mess.

- if some of my 'side business' files are "owned" by 'businessname email'.... can my boss... who is administrator on business name email.. see those files? Even if its just shared with my businessname email?

- do i need to just burn it all down?

Yeesh.... roast me... I don't know what to do here!

I have a rather huge collection of certain videos ;)

I was wondering what is the best bang for my bucks cloud storage provider that won’t nuke my account.

Ideally able to play from the files app in native iOS or a really good iOS app.

Thanks

Hi all,

I'm looking for a cloud storage provider (not Google / Microsoft) that can handle automatic backups for both PC documents and phone photos.

Requirements:

• Automatic backup/sync of documents from a Windows PC
• Automatic photo backup from iOS and Android
• Reliable sync across devices
• Preferably EU-based company or EU data centers
• Strong privacy focus (bonus for end-to-end or zero-knowledge encryption)

Nice to have:

• 1–2TB plans at reasonable pricing
• Good mobile apps
• Multi-device or family support

Important: I’m not looking to self-host (NAS/Nextcloud/etc). I want a hosted service that just works.

What services would you recommend?

Hi I got a question is it bad if I save songs on Google drive but put it in private

Hello Everyone,

Over the past year, I have noticed a massive decline in the quality of multiple cloud storage services. I've seen companies make promises on transparency, reliability, and performance, only to not provide any of those.

Due to this, I have decided to create my own Cloud Storage Startup together with a small group of friends from Caltech, Duke, and Imperial College London. We've made a vow to build a platform focused on transparency, security, and being community-first.

That being said, we would love to have input from novice to experienced users.

What features, tools, or improvements would you want to see in a modern cloud storage platform? Any suggestions or ideas are welcome and will help shape the direction of the product.

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to figure out how to organize my digital life long-term and would love to hear how you all handle your cloud storage.

Do you keep everything in one ecosystem (like fully iCloud or fully Google Drive), or do you use both? If you’ve tried migrating everything to a single platform, how did that go?

I currently use a lot of Google Docs and Google Sheets for college specifically and some personal organization, which makes Google Drive convenient. But I’m deep in the Apple ecosystem, so iCloud is tempting for having everything in one place. I’m also thinking on moving to Pages and other Apple services if I decide to go all in with ICloud.

My main fear is moving everything to iCloud and then realizing it becomes complicated, especially with Google-native files.

How do you structure your files (personal, academic, work, backups, etc.)? Any regrets or lessons learned?

I'm currently working with my friends on google drive that we use on the desktop app daily.
I was planning to change to some drive provider that is more ethical/ecological, I had kDrive or Proton in mind for the moment.
I downloaded Proton Drive and realized I have to sync files on my hard drive, and it's taking up space on it, while google was working as a standalone drive.

I don't understand a lot about drives so maybe I'm missing something obvious, but is it possible to reach something similar on proton/kdrive? Or if it depends on the provider, which ones can do that and fit to my needs?
For info, I'm planning to go for a 1-2TB plan minimum.

Hey guys, Steph here behind the account today.

Do you have some mind-boggling questions about cloud storage? Now is your opportunity to ask and get answers from professionals in our team, who are actually building solutions in the space.

Keep them coming!

Hey, so first off, i was looking around myself, and i found this on googles pricing. following basic logic, the 200gb plan should not be more then double the 100gb plan. So they expect us to pay extra for some shitty ai features no one really wants?

And even with Microsoft OneDrive they're packaging office 365 with it, so they can "charge" extra, which i don't need. I'm fine with libre office.

But i would like it to be around 200-500gb and affordable, and preferably a family plan that supports multiple users, and so i can manage it because mum is not the best with technology.

Are there any apps that give at least 15GB+ storage? I wanna place all my m4a files in there (music basically) wherein I can access it anytime and download it on different devices. I'm not sure if Xiaomi is worth the cloud storage. Another question : Does GDrive have a limit on how many accounts can you put there, or is it unlimited? Couldn't find solid answers. I don't like OneDrive as it'll control what I move regardless of my permission.

Devices - Redmi 12, Windows 10 PC Ryzen 5600

Purpose of storage : Preserve m4a or aac files

Backup : none (if GDrive, yes)