Recommend best cloud upload and storage

noel_lim

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I like Google cloud storage. I find that they have better documentation and easier UI!

cloud.google.com/storage/
 

tengg

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How much data do you have ? Would Dropbox, Google Drive, or iCloud not works for you ? If you want enterprise storage solution, you can read this and find out more by yourself or post more here
https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html#r=SIN&key=calc-2ED31B03-6753-4545-86FC-16C4B687B655

With a 1Gbps connection, with the right tool or skill, one can blitz beyond 700+Mbps upload to AWS S3. That would be beyond your consumer grade cloud storage, but you must be able to stomach the price :)

No free lunch, so have the right expectation.
This service serves like a bank isn't it? You don't get to frequently access the file as and when you want to. Correct me if I am wrong here.
 

davidktw

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This service serves like a bank isn't it? You don't get to frequently access the file as and when you want to. Correct me if I am wrong here.

Well I won’t compare AWS S3 to a bank :) But if you make this comparison, what is stopping you from drawing out money from your bank for payment anytime of the day except when the online system is down for maintenance?

In anycase, S3 has extremely high uptime and it is also potentially used to serve as static(server-side) website. So you can most certainly download and upload files from/to S3 anytime and anywhere you like.
 

tengg

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Well I won’t compare AWS S3 to a bank :) But if you make this comparison, what is stopping you from drawing out money from your bank for payment anytime of the day except when the online system is down for maintenance?

In anycase, S3 has extremely high uptime and it is also potentially used to serve as static(server-side) website. So you can most certainly download and upload files from/to S3 anytime and anywhere you like.

Thanks for the reply. You seem knowledgeable in this area. Excellent. I am comparing AWS S3 vs BackBlaze B2. I had a few hdd failures, resulting in the loss of previous data and memories, and thus looking to store my data onto cloud. The above two providers looks secured but charges for every data you upload and download. Comparing to other providers such as Google Drive, pCloud who provide unlimited upload/download. What is your take on that?
 

davidktw

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Thanks for the reply. You seem knowledgeable in this area. Excellent. I am comparing AWS S3 vs BackBlaze B2. I had a few hdd failures, resulting in the loss of previous data and memories, and thus looking to store my data onto cloud. The above two providers looks secured but charges for every data you upload and download. Comparing to other providers such as Google Drive, pCloud who provide unlimited upload/download. What is your take on that?

It's about use cases and your budget. Generally AWS S3 target audiences are enterprises, so the cost is not prohibitively high. In fact, using the pay-as-you-use model which offers a dynamic usage, AWS can be consider more accurate and affordable.

BackBlaze B2 or AWS S3 should be fine for most consumers, except if you consider data residency matters. B2 DC is found in Sacramento California, so it is under the jurisdiction of US law. For S3, you can create buckets in the Singapore region or other regions such as EU, India, Aussie, Japan etc, hence controlling where your data are stored.

AWS S3 are split into different storage classes which you will want to read up at https://aws.amazon.com/s3/storage-classes/. Meddle with the objects lifecycle, or chooses the S3 Intelligent Tiering, your data can be shifted between them to optimise on your cost.

Coming to pricing B2 pricing is definitely lower than S3(Ohio region), but these are 2 different services altogether. B2 pricing can be comparable to S3 Glacier and S3 Glacier and Glacier deep archival goes even cheaper at USD0.004/GB/mth and USD0.00099/GB/mth respectively. S3 Glacier has its own set of caveats though so you will need to understand the various data storage behaviours to make appropriate assessment.

Now if you don't need all the enterprise features that comes with AWS S3 and its ecosystem and you don't mind your data is stored out of your country, then you can by all means choose options like BackBlaze B2.

As for other cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox, M$ OneDrive, they works, but pretty slow since their objective is not offer an enterprise class storage, but rather something more affordable for normal consumers. You will want to use them for syncing information, but not as large storage solutions.

If you want something closer to you and more affordable, you can always go with local solutions like Synology, QNAP NAS. With some discipline and proper usage, you can achieve some level of redundancies too, but won't be as robust as what some cloud storage providers are offering.

I hope these informations helps in your search for your suitable storage solution. For myself, I uses iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Synology NAS and also AWS S3 for different purposes.
 

tengg

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It's about use cases and your budget. Generally AWS S3 target audiences are enterprises, so the cost is not prohibitively high. In fact, using the pay-as-you-use model which offers a dynamic usage, AWS can be consider more accurate and affordable.

BackBlaze B2 or AWS S3 should be fine for most consumers, except if you consider data residency matters. B2 DC is found in Sacramento California, so it is under the jurisdiction of US law. For S3, you can create buckets in the Singapore region or other regions such as EU, India, Aussie, Japan etc, hence controlling where your data are stored.

AWS S3 are split into different storage classes which you will want to read up at https://aws.amazon.com/s3/storage-classes/. Meddle with the objects lifecycle, or chooses the S3 Intelligent Tiering, your data can be shifted between them to optimise on your cost.

Coming to pricing B2 pricing is definitely lower than S3(Ohio region), but these are 2 different services altogether. B2 pricing can be comparable to S3 Glacier and S3 Glacier and Glacier deep archival goes even cheaper at USD0.004/GB/mth and USD0.00099/GB/mth respectively. S3 Glacier has its own set of caveats though so you will need to understand the various data storage behaviours to make appropriate assessment.

Now if you don't need all the enterprise features that comes with AWS S3 and its ecosystem and you don't mind your data is stored out of your country, then you can by all means choose options like BackBlaze B2.

As for other cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox, M$ OneDrive, they works, but pretty slow since their objective is not offer an enterprise class storage, but rather something more affordable for normal consumers. You will want to use them for syncing information, but not as large storage solutions.

If you want something closer to you and more affordable, you can always go with local solutions like Synology, QNAP NAS. With some discipline and proper usage, you can achieve some level of redundancies too, but won't be as robust as what some cloud storage providers are offering.

I hope these informations helps in your search for your suitable storage solution. For myself, I uses iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Synology NAS and also AWS S3 for different purposes.

Very insightful information, more than what I need to ask for. A few jargon terms which I am unfamiliar with. Thank you and are you in the IT industry and meddle with servers on a daily basis?
 

davidktw

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Very insightful information, more than what I need to ask for. A few jargon terms which I am unfamiliar with. Thank you and are you in the IT industry and meddle with servers on a daily basis?

You can welcome. I'm an IT solution architect. :)
 

stupidog

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i created a rule to move my glacier stuffs to deep archiving...

since i am not going to retrieve the stuffs any time, might as well put them into

glacier deep archive. should be cheaper right ?
 

davidktw

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i created a rule to move my glacier stuffs to deep archiving...

since i am not going to retrieve the stuffs any time, might as well put them into

glacier deep archive. should be cheaper right ?

Your assessment is quite correct, but make sure you read up carefully on the cost and latency to retrieve your data. Normally Glacier storage are for really long term storage such as logs which institutes will safe keep for compliance purposes.

It can be more expensive to retrieve data frequently from glacier compared to S3 if you are not careful. Read up on https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/?nc=sn&loc=4 to see the pricing model.

Suppose you have a video file of 4GB that you could store in S3 for 1 month and retrieve it 10 times per month, that should cost as follows

7pO1uTW.png


There will always be data transfer cost no matter which approach you use, but retrieving from S3 standard typically do not incur other more of other cost and is immediate, while retrieving from Glacier will incur extra retrieval cost.

So if you are just retrieving the data once per month and you don't mind the asynchronous slow turn around time, you can store them in glacier. Retrieving from glacier is not just download as a link that simple. You either use the S3 Glacier API to initiate a retrieve which you can be notified later when it is ready, or you initiate it where it will be made available into S3 standard for retrieval when it is ready.
 

stupidog

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thank you for your detailed information, david. ;)

i put those stuff in glacier or deep archive, i dun intend to take out unless all my hdd or my pc kaput :D

i use s3 standard for my daily stuffs.
 

szeli

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This service serves like a bank isn't it? You don't get to frequently access the file as and when you want to. Correct me if I am wrong here.

if u have issue with cost of download n upload why not give Wasabi a try.
 

aqf

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Ok I'll planning to get a domain name and apply for gsuite business. Storage is unlimited for 1 user $12 ya

Sent from Samsung SM-N960F using GAGT
 

Hafi

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Ok I'll planning to get a domain name and apply for gsuite business. Storage is unlimited for 1 user $12 ya

Sent from Samsung SM-N960F using GAGT

on paper its 1TB per user if less than 5 pax but so far its not enforced and you are free to upload "un-metered". Before you sign up, you can do a search on Google for 20% discount coupon for your 1st year subscription.
 

everex

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How about Zoolz cloud storage? What is your view on this solution? They currently offer 1Tb for 3year subscription for USD35.

Thanks in advance. :)



Your assessment is quite correct, but make sure you read up carefully on the cost and latency to retrieve your data. Normally Glacier storage are for really long term storage such as logs which institutes will safe keep for compliance purposes.

It can be more expensive to retrieve data frequently from glacier compared to S3 if you are not careful. Read up on https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/?nc=sn&loc=4 to see the pricing model.

Suppose you have a video file of 4GB that you could store in S3 for 1 month and retrieve it 10 times per month, that should cost as follows

7pO1uTW.png


There will always be data transfer cost no matter which approach you use, but retrieving from S3 standard typically do not incur other more of other cost and is immediate, while retrieving from Glacier will incur extra retrieval cost.

So if you are just retrieving the data once per month and you don't mind the asynchronous slow turn around time, you can store them in glacier. Retrieving from glacier is not just download as a link that simple. You either use the S3 Glacier API to initiate a retrieve which you can be notified later when it is ready, or you initiate it where it will be made available into S3 standard for retrieval when it is ready.
 

hazardhut

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I'm using Dropbox for storage, and syncing. My desktop, documents, download folders are on Dropbox. I chose Dropbox over OneDrive, Google Drive for stability reason. I've think about using other that are more suited for just long term storage, but find them just don't find them user friendly enough.

Sent from Careeach HR using GAGT
 

dao

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Your assessment is quite correct, but make sure you read up carefully on the cost and latency to retrieve your data. Normally Glacier storage are for really long term storage such as logs which institutes will safe keep for compliance purposes.

It can be more expensive to retrieve data frequently from glacier compared to S3 if you are not careful. Read up on https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/?nc=sn&loc=4 to see the pricing model.

Suppose you have a video file of 4GB that you could store in S3 for 1 month and retrieve it 10 times per month, that should cost as follows

7pO1uTW.png


There will always be data transfer cost no matter which approach you use, but retrieving from S3 standard typically do not incur other more of other cost and is immediate, while retrieving from Glacier will incur extra retrieval cost.

So if you are just retrieving the data once per month and you don't mind the asynchronous slow turn around time, you can store them in glacier. Retrieving from glacier is not just download as a link that simple. You either use the S3 Glacier API to initiate a retrieve which you can be notified later when it is ready, or you initiate it where it will be made available into S3 standard for retrieval when it is ready.

thanks for all the sharing. i am thinking of moving most, if not all, of my files in various hdd into cloud, before they start to give problem.

for aws s3, how do we put/get files from aws s3 from PC or phone? is there any app to facilitate that?
 

jackoats.sg

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thanks for all the sharing. i am thinking of moving most, if not all, of my files in various hdd into cloud, before they start to give problem.

for aws s3, how do we put/get files from aws s3 from PC or phone? is there any app to facilitate that?
One thing about cloud storage is that you'd have to monitor it's bill (amount stored & frequency of retrieval) .

Should you consider backups to external drives first (fixed cost)? Also backups should be done on a monthly basis, in case machine got infected with ransomware which might affect a few months backup. Hardware cost can be a factor, of course.

Also, if you only have backups on the cloud, what is going to happen if you lost the cloud account?
 
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