Cloud Drives and survival

[thunderbolt]

This probably should be in the tech forum but...

My dad and I got into an argument this last weekend over the future of media, specificly media devices. He contends that services like Pandora, Amazon's cloud drive, and any other streaming service is preferable to the old clunky way of physically storing the media on your device. I contend that it's still way too early to surrender my entire digital library to some nebulous data cloud since the technology is still in it's infancy.

What got me to thinking about it in survival terms is the new Amazon Fire plays up it's "Unlimited Cloud storage" but downplays the fact that it only has an 8Gb internal HD. I keep a select library of music, movies, books and all my survival manuals on my phone (with solar charging capability) to hedge against the likelyhood that I can't get signal while I'm camping or in the unlikely event something"bad" happens (and the first person to mention EMP is going to get an angry face.) 8Gb isn't enough. Not to mention the security aspect of it with anyone being able to monitor what you're watching/listening to ect.

So my question is am I crazy or does anyone else share my distrust of this "cloud" technology?

[meaty-btz]

Cloud Computing as with all advanced technological solutions can only exist in an advanced culture as we have today. Any disruption to that system will result in the inaccessibility of said "cloud".

[POLICESTATE]

Justice dept already tried to gain access to data stored on any cloud, said that a shared storage solution had no expectation of privacy therefore no warrant should be required to look at anyone's stuff. Fortunately the courts said no.

But still, it could happen, or more than likely it could get hacked. If you want to store your stuff in the cloud just bear in mind that it's not really that secure at any one time.

OTOH, I wonder if one could store a truecrypt image on the cloud?

I may have to try this.

[barbasol]

I have all my music and photos in the cloud already. Googles cloud storage for ios devices allows you to keep a local copy on your device. My music library is way larger than my iphone could hold but with the cloud I can access any of it as long as I have a cel signal. If I will be off the grid flying, camping etc, I just download a few albums. I also keep my original copies of digital content on my laptop and backed up on external drives.

[Ripon83]

It does not bother me to put entertainment material on a public drive (cloud) but there are things I would not want to put there and have at risk of anyone seeing. For example on a simple USB drive I have there is a complete list of my firearms and serial numbers with the names of my nephews and nieces that will some day inherit them. I don't want that on a computer or drive that is accessible to anyone. I like the ironkey.

[POLICESTATE]

It does not bother me to put entertainment material on a public drive (cloud) but there are things I would not want to put there and have at risk of anyone seeing. For example on a simple USB drive I have there is a complete list of my firearms and serial numbers with the names of my nephews and nieces that will some day inherit them. I don't want that on a computer or drive that is accessible to anyone. I like the ironkey.

If Ironkey were to get into cloud hosting with a similar approach to security like on their thumb drives that would be an interesting thing to look into.

[olhunter]

He mentions survival, not daily data storage.

Bad idea having your important docs and data stored on a remote server. In pretty much any survival-type situation, electricity will be first to go. If not at the server location, then anywhere along the path could mess you up. DNS servers, core routers, local routers, blah, blah...not working. Then what?

Put your stuff on some kind of external device, lock it down (TrueCrypt - awesome) and keep it with you.

I don't get businesses making the switch and relying solely on 'the cloud'. Even a local outage and you're dead in the water.

[XYZ]

Truecrypt on an Ironkey. The issue is storage space so I still use SugarSync and Dropbox (this uses 256 bit AES data encryption which is military standard - Sugar Sync uses 128 bit). Having several options may help to preserve your data.

Check out this guys experience after Katrina. It's a very long read but really informative about data preservation.

http://www.theplacewithnoname.com/blogs/klessons/ht/ht00001.html

I scanned in every photo/document imaginable - several thousand items. It took me about two months. Now it's just maintenance but everything is preserved just in case.

[Neuvik]

If you need dedicated online storage there are a variety of companies that specialize in that all with varying degrees of cost and security. They aren’t public, negating that fear, I’d say they are relatively hack safe but what really is these days.

I’m assuming you’re trying to put up information relating to your survival and well being like bank account number, that million dollar project blue prints, gun serials, gps coordinates to your buried storage boxes; and not your music library, or some such.
Clouds don’t make too much sense if you have sensitive material or stuff you don’t want other people to see. I use it with a cheapo tower I got off craiglists, wiped it, threw on linux and joined a clound so we could use the space for some big fortran data sets we had to create and store.

Hard drives are cheap these days, I have multiples and buried a few. Family photos, music to pdf text books on energetic chemistry. Your phone storage is a good move, I think the Palm smartphones can use the large gb SDHC for your key items. I have a palm tx and it can only use 4gig ones, but I just have multiples. Back up everything.

[thunderbolt]

For real-life emergency purposes I have redundant back ups of my more sensetive data on portable HDs and even DVD storage. All my data (almost 2 Tb worth) is backed up.

I like the idea of not having to worry about physical storage and anything I would put on a cloud drive isn't anything I'd be concerned about being seen by the general public. The problem I have with "cloud drives" is the fact that if I'm going to pay money for something, I want it to be available when and where I want it and not just when I can get Wi-fi. I never noticed how many places I can't get signal until I started playing around with a streaming service and it kinda makes me angry. Plus the fact that they are not fully under my control. Maybe I'm just being a crazy control freak but the thought of relying on a virtual drive fills me with a vauge sense of dread especially since I work in the communications industry and know exactly how bad it is when a node out in BFE fails knocking out your circuit connectivity.

[olhunter]

Here's something else to think about -

You can put your docs in a password protected zip file and then put that zip container into another protected zip file. Zips can be cracked, but if use 15 character (or more) pw's on both, and don't use words or anything easy, their brute-force attack will take a loooong time. If the first is cracked, they will not see any descriptive file names, just another zip container. Then they have to crack that.

I only go 3 levels, but you could do it as many times as you want.

Then email that to yourself. If you ever get stranded somewhere and need your stuff and the Internet is working, you have them. And if someone hacks your email account, they still don't have your stuff. Just some locked zips.

You could do that on any cloud storage service you want and your files would be relatively secure, even if it's hacked or turned over to the goobermint.

I figure I could show up naked at an embassy in some foreign country and still have access to a copy of my passport and other ID.

Oh, don't forget your passwords. lol...

[loose_electron]

multiple copies kept in multiple locations and regular backups

HDD's do fail, cloud servers? eh, not for me, although the technology is not anything new its been used in the business world for many years - if its got to move around w/me I am always carrying a USB memory stick. 16GB in my pocket is sufficient for that.

[automatikdonn]

If you feel like just letting some nameless faceless company handle your vital data... sure... Not me, I like pens, and paper...

And cloud drives drive down the prices of hard drives for those of us who still want "limited" data. I have 6TB of storage and 2 are taken... I guess when i get close i will go spend another 60 bucks on a drive.

[slam128]

The cloud is only as good as your internet connection to it. If your ISP is down or wifi/ 3G connection is down or slowed by hammered bandwidth, you will not have any access to your data. What if you're at at location without any internet connections like camping or even on an airplane? Your weakest link is your connection!

Sony is a gigantic corporation with a huge IT department, yet it was hacked not once, but twice! Imagine a smaller company who considers storing information outside of their network to be managed right next to data from other companies? If your data is stored on some cloud somewhere along with other company's data, it's almost like a sitting target waiting for someone to attack. No thanks!

[stix213]

Nothing wrong with storing data on cloud storage if two things are satisfied:

1) You have no need for said data during an emergency
2) You have no reason to hide said data from prying eyes