Best way to store important data for personal and friends and family

I currently have some family members and friends information stored on my pc at home. I am currently looking into finding a way to store their data and some of my personal data with scaling, redundancy, and remote access. I have looked into some cloud based solutions such as maybe using AWS, Pcloud, and others. Has anyone else been asked to do something similar and what did you use or how did you set it up?

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JDMurray

If you are needing to store file-based information then Google Drive (G Suite) or DropBox will work for you.

TechGromit

I prefer a solution I control, such a My Cloud Expert Series EX4100, this network accessible hard drive is a 8 TB external hard drive. Personally I wonder about the privacy of storing your data on a cloud solution, a recent case involved a doctor that uploaded child **** to a online storage provider, and the provider turned him into the FBI. While I'm not storing that kind of files, you have to wonder, how exactly did they determine that those kind of files were being stored by the doctor? Obviously someone looked at the files at some point, Probably a hash match of a known file of this type lead to further investigation. Another example would be a SANS instructor was storing malware investigation files and tools on a google share drive for students to use. Google detected the files and deleted the entire share drive. Since it was a free service, the instructor had no recourse, several files that he couldn't replaced since it was considered a "safe" storage location, he didn't have alternative backup locations. You have to consider the cost of these services as well, a Drop box professional service is 19.99 a month for 3 GB storage. You can pay off a $600 8 TB external HD in 3 years of drop box subscription savings. If you consider that a Business Advanced service is $25 a month for unlimited storage, or $240 billed a year, you can buy a LOT of external storage for that price spread over a few years. While yes the storage your purchasing at home isn't unlimited. you have to look at home much data your really storing in the first place. With all my files I accumulated over the years, I be hard pressed to fill up even 1 TB drive.

JDMurray

TechGromit said:

how exactly did they determine that those kind of files were being stored by the doctor? Obviously someone looked at the files at some point, Probably a hash match of a known file of this type lead to further investigation.

Yes, this is an important point. Using a public Cloud service requires giving consent for your files to be scanned for specific content either by cryptographic hashing or direct examination of the file's contents. This is used to detect Malware, copyright infringements (pirating), and any content that Law Enforcement is interested in via a warrant or its general illegality. File encryption should be used if the user of a Cloud service does not wish to expose the intellectual contents of uploaded files to the Cloud Service Provider.

jah8887

Thanks for all the insight so far! I was concerned about the security and privacy of using a public cloud or something where data could be read. The only things so far relatives and friends have asked are like family photos, videos of trips and some important scanned in documents. I currently would like to do an in home thing but the problem is currently, I am in a very old house and the power flickers a lot along with the internet connection not being stable. So far I am guessing maybe 10GB of data or less would suffice for what's being asked but I am sure in time more will be asked if I can do this or that with storing.

UnixGuy

iCloud works well for me. Then again, I don't think I have anything I'd consider super important...

thomas_

I agree with @JDMurray on encrypting data. Of course you will then have to manage the key and if you lose it, then you lose your data.

I’ve heard of Amazon Glacier which is quite a bit cheaper than their S3 service. I believe you get charged a lot if you want to restore more than 10% of the files, but if you had catastrophic loss of data on your local storage it would be worrh the money.

I don’t really like SaaS offerings too much because I don’t like paying recurring monthly charges. However, I’ve been tempted to sign up for a O365 account. I believe they give you 1TB of storage along with continually updated versions of the MS Office suite. I still haven’t pulled the trigger, but the combination of cloud storage and access to the office applications is somewhat enticing.

You can have all the local storage in the world, but if your house catches fire, then you just lost everything without some type of offsite backup.

jah8887

“You can have all the local storage in the world, but if your house catches fire, then you just lost everything without some type of offsite backup.”
That is my concern and I had thought of building a storage server but that was my fear something would happen to it via flood,fire etc.

JDMurray

Backup your local file server to the Cloud for Disaster Recovery.

khleh

Anyone got any opinions on Storj?

JDMurray

carenator said:

I would say that never upload any of your private data to a public server like Google Drive. You are actually sharing your personal data with Google.

One notable exception is information that is encrypted by the user. All Cloud providers, and several third-parities, offer encryption services that allow information to be encrypted by the Cloud user and using keys managed only by the Cloud user. The Cloud provider cannot decrypt this data (to read/change it) and the Cloud user is completely responsible for managing the use of the data.