I’m interested to hear what do people use as their cloud backup and the cost of it. I currently use idrive e2 storage at 5$ per TB a month. Trying to see if there is any better deal anywhere and just curious on everyone’s thoughts.
I look up at the clouds and pray my hard drive doesn’t crap out.
I use Backblaze personal backup for $9 per month with unlimited storage. I’ve backed up many terabytes without an issue.
Yup. My main living data is on a NAS, my on-site backup is an external USB enclosure with a SATA hard drive hooked up to a Mac Mini, all so that I can leverage a Backblaze account to back up the external hard drive with unlimited data.
Pro tip—there is a docker container that simulates windows with Backblaze in it so you can use the unlimited plan in Linux.
Got a link for that?
Amazon Glacier at like US$23/month for around 10 TB. It’s going to be a nightmare expense to pull it all back out though, especially after building a new NAS at these current prices.
What are you using to get it there and back?
I’m asking because I had been using this for years and only after a catastrophic event, discovered that my “helpful” backup software had turned on versioning which AWS, also helpfully, doesn’t explicitly tell you when you attempt to delete old backup sets, showing no objects but charging you anyway.
I did recover all my data after a catastrophic event, but it was an expensive experience to put it mildly.
I had a Synology DS412+ using their glacier interface to backup offsite. Pictures, personal dvd/bluray collections and music collections. Moved internationally and the NAS/hard drives didn’t fit into our weight/damage potential allowance. So we opted for the nuclear option of keeping it all on ice and paying through the nose to get it all back locally later.
Looking at one of the UGREEN boxes and some sort of port of the synology os/apps to pull it back down. Worst case scenario, I grab a new synology box and pay their hardware premium to recover things. The hope is to move away from both Synology and Amazon as much as possible.
Nothing is set in stone though, it’s a project for later once the savings is replenished and we have some more discretionary funds.
My solution is surprisingly Microsoft OneDrive, but hear me out. I have the family plan that gives you 1TB per account and you can have up to 6 in the family, giving you a total of 6TB. The thing is, I don’t trust Microsoft, so I use rclone with a crypt remote that encrypts everything before it reaches OneDrive and the encryption key lives in the rclone config on my machine. Make multiple local copies of this file and you’re all set. You can replicate this with any storage provider and you don’t have to trust them.
Yup, once you encrypt at home just chose the cheapest / most reliable (or use multiple) depending on taste off site storage. Trust is no longer an issue.
I’d like to see some sort of MergerFS for multiple offsites with varying redundancy levels, instead of my shell script.
Storj
I use Filen, I don’t know if they still do it but you used to be able to buy a lifetime plan for a one-time fee that was like 50-100GB or something like that, and you could stack them. So I just bought several during a Black Friday sale.
a nas at the opposite ind of the house. If the whoue house goes boom, I have bigger problems to worry about than my data
I use physical drives that I backup and swap weekly. I’m not a business and this is good enough for the things I want to save, in case everything goes BOOM! I was probably one of the first to say “A Cloud? That would be just someone else’s computer. Why would you store your valuable data in somebody else’s computer? That makes no sense!”
The best cloud solution is your own local storage. There is no way I will ever trust SOMEONE ELSE with MY data.
I use restic to:
- A Raspberry Pi with an external 4 TB SSD at a friend’s house a few hours drive away
- Jottacloud
The cheapest options I’ve found over the years are mostly black Friday sales on lifetime plans. Be careful who you trust, of course. There are lots of scammy ones out there, but there are also some reputable companies that have been around a good long while still offering lifetime plans. Check reviews before buying.
Over the years I’ve picked up cheap(ish) lifetime memberships with pCloud, Koofr, and Filen. I’ve already gotten my money’s worth out of them.
I use Borg to create encrypted backups on an external HD, and then I periodically sync that to cloud providers. I prefer E2EE services but it’s not a strict requirement for backups since Borg encrypts them anyway.
On Windows I recommend Kopia instead of Borg, at least until Borg gets an official stable windows build (planned for 2.0, currently in beta)
I exclude most things I could re-download like games and movies so 1TB covers my needs pretty well.
My backup method

On a serious note, I’m working on it. I have another proxmox node which I’m in the process of building, which should have a backup system. So weekly backups from my main proxmox node will be transferred to the backup node.
To me backups in the cloud are no backups. I could never physically get to the disk and someone else controls my account.
My 1st backups go to a NAS (with encrypted raid disks) in my garage that is 35 meters away from my house. The 2nd backup are encrypted files (encrypted disks are not practical, it’s a challenge after power-dips etc) to a storage at my daughters place. That second option goes via my own vpn which also gives me the opportunity to go out on the internet there (convenient for some tv shows my wife wanna see)
https://www.idrive.com/pricing this is who I use, 35 bucks a month for 50 TB
Wow, that’s not cheap!
I don’t have any :')
My “cloud backup” is a NAS in another room. If the house cathes fire, there’s an earthquake or the volcano I live close erupts I say bye bye to everything
To be fair… if all that happens, you’re probably toast too
I am the same way. My backup is on the other side of the room. If my house goes up in flames, I’ll have bigger issues to deal with, like my house going up in flames.
Data is just data. It wasn’t there when I was born and it’s all encrypted now so when I die, I want the next person to wipe it clean and use the hardware for themselves.
Having a backup is convenient but it’s not the end of the world if I lose it.
To be fair if my dad or grandpa hands me his backup, I’d love to keep it and look at those old photos and videos. They hold a greater value than the hardware itself
That’s fair
I have a very different view on data, physical property and familial relationships. Everything is temporary to me and I’ve prefer my stuff to be reused rather than act as an archive to my own life.
My pictures, music and technology related projects are just for myself. Anything I wish to share after my death is stored on an unencrypted drive connected to a Raspberry Pi that acts as my web facing server that serves only static data. It’s mainly a bunch of wikis, linux/shell scripting references, some of my git repositories, some survival type ebooks and some other random stuff.
I’ve lost data multiple times throughout my life so I know I’d be disappointed but not sad if I lost all my data one more time. I do have multiple backups now so I at least have some data resilience compared to the past.
It’s always interesting to see different viewpoints, thank you :)
Borgbase - 1TB for $90 a year but they have smaller options. I then use Restic as my previous Borg setup kept stopping and couldn’t figure out why









