Any ideas for a storage solution?

Barks

Barks

Barks

Soldato
Joined
20 Jul 2008
Posts
4,433
Problem: Macbook only has 256gb storage and I have about 2TB of data (on an external HD) I would ideally like to move into a cloud or online based backup system for peace of mind.

I've tried Google and iCloud - but it seems to be designed around this need to sync. Sure, that works well for documents but what's the easiest way to just archive a load of old files offline and leave them there?

Dream scenario would be to have everything accessible via the cloud as if my laptop was connected to an external HD. If I wanted to open a file that was 1GB then it would just be downloaded temporarily.

Is it possible to pay for a service that doesn't have any 'syncing' capability, literally just a drag and drop onto offline storage solution?
 
I meant to say I realise iCloud can be set to keep stuff offline but I haven't found a way to directly transfer files from my external HD for 'offline' cloud storage, it seems to need to save them locally first which is impossible given my HD limit.
 
Cheers - looks very good!

Is it definitely easy tell it what you want syncing and what you want you just want stored offline?
 
I just removed the default filters that stop some content from uploading and effectively told it to do everything.

Barks said:
Dream scenario would be to have everything accessible via the cloud as if my laptop was connected to an external HD. If I wanted to open a file that was 1GB then it would just be downloaded temporarily.
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Note, it doesn't do this. It's a cloud backup system, it doesn't work as you've described.
 
Use a remote storage drive mapper app like Mountain Duck (https://mountainduck.io) and connect to DropBox/OneDrive/Google Drive (if you can get Unlimited) - remote drive storage shows up a 'drive' within Finder.

Arguably you can use S3/BackBlaze B2 etc but transfer costs will make it fairly expensive compared to the above, which will be in the £10-30 per month range.

Edit - As mentioned, BackBlaze (non-B2) is typically a backup solution rather than remote storage. Although, i believe they're S3 based so you might (never tried or looked into it) have some luck in using it with drive mapper app but i wouldn't be surprised if download rates are heavily limited.
 
Just to add to this.. I have Backblaze B2 cloud storage set up on my NAS. I can't speak for the desktop client but it's been bomb-proof for me. I set it up in 2019 and have mapped all my local machines to use the NAS for their documents etc and it just runs in the background. The initial upload was painful on a 5Mbps connection :( but now it only syncs changes, so it's not noticeable.

For £8 a month all of my documents, photos and essential bits are backed up (about 2-3TB iirc) over the cloud and I've configured it to keep 2 revisions of files for those "oh noes" moments when you save over a document etc.

If I had faster internet and deeper pockets I'd let it backup the whole NAS but I'm not worried about losing music or movies that I already own on physical media.
 
EVH said:
If I had faster internet and deeper pockets I'd let it backup the whole NAS but I'm not worried about losing music or movies that I already own on physical media.
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Technically that's not allowed by Backblaze.
However....
I've got 6Tb left to upload out of 15Tb on my NAS ;)
 
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