mettelus
 
One could simply encrypt an external HDD and store it semi-remotely to achieve the same thing.

The easiest way to do this is to use BitLocker in Windows (8.1/10) Pro to do full drive encryption.  Then it's a simple matter of storing the drive off-site.  I use a WD Elements 1TB portable USB drive with BitLocker, and it works great. 
 
A beginner's guide to BitLocker, Windows' built-in encryption tool
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2308725/encryption/a-beginners-guide-to-bitlocker-windows-built-in-encryption-tool.html
 
How to Use BitLocker Without a Trusted Platform Module (TPM)
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/6229/how-to-use-bitlocker-on-drives-without-tpm/

mettelus

BobF
My primary objection to Cloud backups is my 300baud internet connection.

I think that holds true for most folks. Even with 200Mb/s it would take over 11 hours to upload 1TB.

And my response is who cares? Who cares if it takes 11 hours? Who cares if it takes 11 days? Once you have that 1TB backed up, its backed up. Chances are most (like 99.999%) of that 1TB aren't going to change very often so once its backed up its there and doesn't need to be backed up again. From that point on only the things that change need to be uploaded. Even a modest connection is more than adequate at that point.

For the price of such a connection you could buy a HDD drive each month. Some hosts charge for bandwidth, so a company using a cloud service would most likely pay more there unless they used incremental backups.

Again, any recommendation for cloud-based backups is predicated on the assumption that you have reasonably priced unlimited broadband available. And incremental backups are the only thing that makes sense when it comes to cloud-based solutions. Do your imaging locally and store physical copies off site.
 
 

A chunk of marketing shifted to "scare tactics" in the late 80s, but a lot of the scenarios used are truly rare. One could simply encrypt an external HDD and store it semi-remotely to achieve the same thing.

True enough, one could in fact achieve the same thing by simply encrypting an external HDD and storing it off-site. But the gotcha there is someone actually has to do it. And human beings being what they are, that gotcha ends up being a game stopper way more often than not. Put another way, if it were that simple, there would be no market for cloud-based services. But there is a market for them. And that market is only able to exist because of the vast number of people who realize they will never have the personal discipline required to be able to perform manual backups regularly. Manual backups do not happen for most people. If you're able to do them on a schedule and never miss, then you should hold your head high and know that you are the truly rare exception to a very wide spread rule.

mettelus

BobF
My primary objection to Cloud backups is my 300baud internet connection.

I think that holds true for most folks. Even with 200Mb/s it would take over 11 hours to upload 1TB. For the price of such a connection you could buy a HDD drive each month. Some hosts charge for bandwidth, so a company using a cloud service would most likely pay more there unless they used incremental backups.
 
A chunk of marketing shifted to "scare tactics" in the late 80s, but a lot of the scenarios used are truly rare. One could simply encrypt an external HDD and store it semi-remotely to achieve the same thing.
 

This is not really a valid objection these days. CrashPlan, for instance, offers to send you a hard drive to get your initial backup to them if it's too large to upload. Their backup app will encrypt it and save it on the hard drive then you just mail it back to them.  
 
Storing a backup HD yourself "semi remotely" has its problems. Not everyone has a "semi remote" location, and even if they do, it's highly unlikely that this is as secure as a reputable backup service which pays good money to keep its backup locations safe and secure (plus they keep a backup of their backup servers should anything happen to the first one). And then there's the inconvenience of having to retrieve your "remote" backup drive when you need to back up more stuff onto it. The beauty of a cloud based backup is that once you get that initial backup up and running, the app makes continual incremental backups as changes are made to files (like Acronis does). CrashPlan also keeps a version history of your files so you can roll back to an earlier version at any time. I cannot begin to stress how useful this is, if for instance you take a project in a direction that you regret later and want to roll back to how it was a couple of weeks ago. 

sharke

mettelus

BobF
My primary objection to Cloud backups is my 300baud internet connection.

I think that holds true for most folks. Even with 200Mb/s it would take over 11 hours to upload 1TB. For the price of such a connection you could buy a HDD drive each month. Some hosts charge for bandwidth, so a company using a cloud service would most likely pay more there unless they used incremental backups.
 
A chunk of marketing shifted to "scare tactics" in the late 80s, but a lot of the scenarios used are truly rare. One could simply encrypt an external HDD and store it semi-remotely to achieve the same thing.
 

This is not really a valid objection these days. CrashPlan, for instance, offers to send you a hard drive to get your initial backup to them if it's too large to upload. Their backup app will encrypt it and save it on the hard drive then you just mail it back to them.  
 
Storing a backup HD yourself "semi remotely" has its problems. Not everyone has a "semi remote" location, and even if they do, it's highly unlikely that this is as secure as a reputable backup service which pays good money to keep its backup locations safe and secure (plus they keep a backup of their backup servers should anything happen to the first one). And then there's the inconvenience of having to retrieve your "remote" backup drive when you need to back up more stuff onto it. The beauty of a cloud based backup is that once you get that initial backup up and running, the app makes continual incremental backups as changes are made to files (like Acronis does). CrashPlan also keeps a version history of your files so you can roll back to an earlier version at any time. I cannot begin to stress how useful this is, if for instance you take a project in a direction that you regret later and want to roll back to how it was a couple of weeks ago. 

I say it is a valid objection.  My internet connection is 3.5Mb down, .75Mb up.  Even if I use the mail-in option to get started, incrementals will all but totally consume my pipe unless I'm not really doing anything.
 
Then when it's time to restore/recover, I have the pipe to deal with again.  My OS partition is approx 74G right now.  Care to guess how long that takes to download?  Hell, when I run out of pause options for Win10 updates my network is crippled until MS gets their fix.  And I'm not the only one using this pathetic pipe.
 
If I'm going to run to the post office, I might as well run to the bank and stick a drive in a safe deposit box instead.
 
If you have the bandwidth, Cloud might be a great option.  We don't all have the bandwidth though.
 
We also have to see how net neutrality (lack of) ends up playing out too.

BobF

sharke

mettelus

BobF
My primary objection to Cloud backups is my 300baud internet connection.

I think that holds true for most folks. Even with 200Mb/s it would take over 11 hours to upload 1TB. For the price of such a connection you could buy a HDD drive each month. Some hosts charge for bandwidth, so a company using a cloud service would most likely pay more there unless they used incremental backups.
 
A chunk of marketing shifted to "scare tactics" in the late 80s, but a lot of the scenarios used are truly rare. One could simply encrypt an external HDD and store it semi-remotely to achieve the same thing.
 

This is not really a valid objection these days. CrashPlan, for instance, offers to send you a hard drive to get your initial backup to them if it's too large to upload. Their backup app will encrypt it and save it on the hard drive then you just mail it back to them.  
 
Storing a backup HD yourself "semi remotely" has its problems. Not everyone has a "semi remote" location, and even if they do, it's highly unlikely that this is as secure as a reputable backup service which pays good money to keep its backup locations safe and secure (plus they keep a backup of their backup servers should anything happen to the first one). And then there's the inconvenience of having to retrieve your "remote" backup drive when you need to back up more stuff onto it. The beauty of a cloud based backup is that once you get that initial backup up and running, the app makes continual incremental backups as changes are made to files (like Acronis does). CrashPlan also keeps a version history of your files so you can roll back to an earlier version at any time. I cannot begin to stress how useful this is, if for instance you take a project in a direction that you regret later and want to roll back to how it was a couple of weeks ago. 

I say it is a valid objection.  My internet connection is 3.5Mb down, .75Mb up.  Even if I use the mail-in option to get started, incrementals will all but totally consume my pipe unless I'm not really doing anything.
 
Then when it's time to restore/recover, I have the pipe to deal with again.  My OS partition is approx 74G right now.  Care to guess how long that takes to download?  Hell, when I run out of pause options for Win10 updates my network is crippled until MS gets their fix.  And I'm not the only one using this pathetic pipe.
 
If I'm going to run to the post office, I might as well run to the bank and stick a drive in a safe deposit box instead.
 
If you have the bandwidth, Cloud might be a great option.  We don't all have the bandwidth though.
 
We also have to see how net neutrality (lack of) ends up playing out too.

With CrashPlan For Home you don't back up in real time, it does it once every 24 hours. I think you can set it to turn your computer off after the backup as well, so you can go to bed and leave it running and it will shut down automatically. So no need to clog up your bandwidth when you're awake. 
 
Like I said, this is just a "last resort" backup which is there if your physical backups fail or are destroyed. I'm sure that if that happened, you'd be happy to have it there even if it meant you had to download your stuff all night to get it. 

BobF
My primary objection to Cloud backups is my 300baud internet connection.

OK. I hate to be 'that guy', but I just gotta ask...
 
Do you actually have a 300baud connection in 2018, or is that just an expression for slow azz internet service?  I understand some folks live in remote areas without broadband internet.
 
The reason I ask is that I worked as a network tech back in the 80's, and that 300 speed was low on the list even back in those days, with 1200/2400/4800 being more common.
 
I seem to recall that dial-up modems reliably reached speed of 28.8-33.6kbit/s over conventional telephone lines in the 90's.

abacab

BobF
My primary objection to Cloud backups is my 300baud internet connection.

OK. I hate to be 'that guy', but I just gotta ask...
 
Do you actually have a 300baud connection in 2018, or is that just an expression for slow azz internet service?  I understand some folks live in remote areas without broadband internet.
 
The reason I ask is that I worked as a network tech back in the 80's, and that 300 speed was low on the list even back in those days, with 1200/2400/4800 being more common.
 
I seem to recall that dial-up modems reliably reached speed of 28.8-33.6kbit/s over conventional telephone lines in the 90's.

That was a slight exaggeration.
 
The real numbers are 3.5Mb x .75Mb
 

sharke

BobF

sharke

mettelus

BobF
My primary objection to Cloud backups is my 300baud internet connection.

I think that holds true for most folks. Even with 200Mb/s it would take over 11 hours to upload 1TB. For the price of such a connection you could buy a HDD drive each month. Some hosts charge for bandwidth, so a company using a cloud service would most likely pay more there unless they used incremental backups.
 
A chunk of marketing shifted to "scare tactics" in the late 80s, but a lot of the scenarios used are truly rare. One could simply encrypt an external HDD and store it semi-remotely to achieve the same thing.
 

This is not really a valid objection these days. CrashPlan, for instance, offers to send you a hard drive to get your initial backup to them if it's too large to upload. Their backup app will encrypt it and save it on the hard drive then you just mail it back to them.  
 
Storing a backup HD yourself "semi remotely" has its problems. Not everyone has a "semi remote" location, and even if they do, it's highly unlikely that this is as secure as a reputable backup service which pays good money to keep its backup locations safe and secure (plus they keep a backup of their backup servers should anything happen to the first one). And then there's the inconvenience of having to retrieve your "remote" backup drive when you need to back up more stuff onto it. The beauty of a cloud based backup is that once you get that initial backup up and running, the app makes continual incremental backups as changes are made to files (like Acronis does). CrashPlan also keeps a version history of your files so you can roll back to an earlier version at any time. I cannot begin to stress how useful this is, if for instance you take a project in a direction that you regret later and want to roll back to how it was a couple of weeks ago. 

I say it is a valid objection.  My internet connection is 3.5Mb down, .75Mb up.  Even if I use the mail-in option to get started, incrementals will all but totally consume my pipe unless I'm not really doing anything.
 
Then when it's time to restore/recover, I have the pipe to deal with again.  My OS partition is approx 74G right now.  Care to guess how long that takes to download?  Hell, when I run out of pause options for Win10 updates my network is crippled until MS gets their fix.  And I'm not the only one using this pathetic pipe.
 
If I'm going to run to the post office, I might as well run to the bank and stick a drive in a safe deposit box instead.
 
If you have the bandwidth, Cloud might be a great option.  We don't all have the bandwidth though.
 
We also have to see how net neutrality (lack of) ends up playing out too.

With CrashPlan For Home you don't back up in real time, it does it once every 24 hours. I think you can set it to turn your computer off after the backup as well, so you can go to bed and leave it running and it will shut down automatically. So no need to clog up your bandwidth when you're awake. 
 
Like I said, this is just a "last resort" backup which is there if your physical backups fail or are destroyed. I'm sure that if that happened, you'd be happy to have it there even if it meant you had to download your stuff all night to get it. 

It might make sense for some folks as a last resort, absolutely critical files only approach.

BobF

abacab

BobF
My primary objection to Cloud backups is my 300baud internet connection.

OK. I hate to be 'that guy', but I just gotta ask...
 
Do you actually have a 300baud connection in 2018, or is that just an expression for slow azz internet service?  I understand some folks live in remote areas without broadband internet....
 
 

That was a slight exaggeration.
 
The real numbers are 3.5Mb x .75Mb
 

One thing to consider is that is about as fast as you can upload to a cloud service anyway, it seems.  It took me a day and a half to transfer 72 GB of audio and I have repeatedly tested my upload speed at 10 Mbps - didn't matter, all I managed was 700 to 800 Kbps, or less.  So it might max you out, but you're not too far off from what you'd be limited to anyways.  
 
Of course, I am not to be confused with an expert here.  Upload speed seems to be an issue with cloud storage in general, and Google Drive seemed to be listed among the fastest, so disappointment is inevitable.  Maybe some techy folks know how to speed that up.  I sure don't.  

Voda La Void
 
Upload speed seems to be an issue with cloud storage in general, and Google Drive seemed to be listed among the fastest, so disappointment is inevitable.  Maybe some techy folks know how to speed that up.  I sure don't.  

Most broadband service operates in an asymmetric mode with download vs upload speeds.  So there is always going to be an issue in that case with pushing a lot of bits UP the pipe, regardless of the storage host's network capacity and load, which may be a big factor as well. 
 
They may have to throttle inbound traffic so that their infrastructure can cope with the load of simultaneous customer connections.  The more infrastructure they have to buy, the lower their profit, so it will always be a balancing act.
 
One exception to asymmetric use that I noticed recently was when I was visiting relatives over the holidays and hopped onto a Verizon FIOS broadband connection.  My network speed tests there showed equal download/upload speeds.  Nice! 
 
So depending on your needs, choose your ISP and your storage hosts wisely... YMMV!