The Cloud?

**Chris Parks** · 6th April 2017, 11:50 AM

The idea of the cloud is great, the information is off the premises, backed up and maintained by professionals etc so is most probably as safe as it can be in our digital world, all this except for one thing in Oz, our upload speeds are so dismal it makes using the cloud on a large volume basis practically impossible. If and when everyone is on the NBN and it actually works as designed then the cloud becomes the place to store large files. We don't get the NBN until the end of 2018 and possibly later so I am going to go a different way and create my own remote cloud. I will buy a multi disc NAS, copy all the info presently sitting on our main NAS (we have two) and put that NAS at my daughter's place integrated into their network. That way we don't have the problem of uploading many terrabytes of information via the internet (never going to happen) and it gets backed up with the small differences that happen on a scheduled basis. Overkill? maybe but it gives me piece of mind as I have had two major data losses, both reputable NAS's and I am determined to prevent a third. It would all be unnecessary if we had 21st century internet but our politicians of all persuasions are doing their level best to prevent that happening.

**NCArcher** · 6th April 2017, 01:43 PM

Originally Posted by derekcohen

I have a paid account with Dropbox, which is one of the original iCloud memory banks. The advantage of Dropbox is that others can access those parts I permit, which makes passing large files to others possible, and I can access any of this information from anywhere in the world.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Drop box is great and I use it for work as well.
We did have an issue last year though. Drop box saves all your work and updates files as they are changed. It then syncs to everyone else that has access to those changed files and updates the files on everyones computer. Everybody has access to the latest version of the files. Great you say but my boss (thank goodness it was the boss) clicked on a ransom virus. His laptop was encrypted before he worked out what was happening. Dropbox then saw that all these files had changed and immediately uploaded the changes. I happened to notice the notification that my computer was updating 16,000 files and immediately stopped the sync. I told everyone else in the office to turn their dropbox sync off straight away but we were too slow.
My bosses computer was toast, needed a complete wipe and reinstall. The ones who stopped the sync needed a fair amount of maintenance to restore the encrypted files. We were saved by one person whose laptop was turned off and wasn't affected.
We did lose a bit of information that he didn't have access to.
I don't know how you protect against something like that as it is not downloading the virus just the changed files. Something to be aware of for any auto syncing to the cloud.

**Chris Parks** · 6th April 2017, 03:14 PM

Yes, as Tony says these ransom virii will access any mounted drive and this is one reason I want a remote drive that is only accessed on demand and not mounted on a permanent basis. He told me this same story some time ago and it was then I decided on an unmounted remote drive.

**derekcohen** · 6th April 2017, 04:36 PM

The way I use Dropbox is to backup manually. That means just uploading to Dropbox any new files created during the day, and I will do this at the end of the day. It takes a few minutes to do, but at least I have control over the information. I do the same with a portable hard drive every few days. This way I am not going to lose more than a few hours work.

Regards from Perth

Derek

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